For the Price of a Soul
by SilverCookieDust
Summary: After selling his soul to a demon for incredible power at the tips of his fingers, Harry flees Privet Drive to spend his next few years on the streets of London, hidden magically as well as physically. When he finally enrols at Hogwarts, only a handful of people know who he truly is, but obscurity doesn't keep him from trouble and power doesn't make for experience.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:** This is a rewritten version of my previous fic. For (spoiler free) details of the differences between this version and the original, please visit the forthepriceofasoul tumblr.

 **Disclaimer:** This fic is technically a crossover with the TV show Supernatural, HOWEVER the elements of Supernatural are small and fully explained, so you needn't have seen the show to understand them and you shouldn't let it put you off reading. This is, very much, a Harry Potter fanfic.

 **Pairings:** Draco/Harry (also includes some Draco/OMC and Harry/Draco/OMC). Other minor/background pairings.  
 _This fic contains mature but not explicit scenes. Also note that this is not a ship-fic; relationships are secondary to plot._

 **WARNINGS:  
** _This story contains a number of adult themes and triggering issues, including but not limited to:_  
Child Abuse and Child Abandonment. Rape. Self-harm. Graphic Torture/Violence. Major Character Death. Master/Slave relationships. Possession. PTSD, due to torture and rape. Suicide. Drug/alcohol abuse.  
 _If you do not wish to read a story containing these subjects, please hit the back button._

 **Chapter 1**

The demon didn't have horns, or a tail, or hoofed feet. There was absolutely nothing about him that appeared even slightly demonic. He looked, in fact, like a man. A perfectly average man with a receding hairline and a short beard, dressed in a suit with a black shirt and a green tie.

If Harry were older, he might have thought on the philosophical implications of that, but as he was only seven years and nine months old, the only thing he thought was that the man wasn't a demon. He was probably one of those dodgy blokes that Aunt Petunia warned Dudley not to take sweets from.

She'd never warned Harry not to take sweets from dodgy blokes, but Harry was smart enough to realise anything she warned Dudley against was definitely bad for him, too. Of course, an argument could be made that anything bad for Dudley was good for Harry, because it worked the other way. According to Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, things that were good for Dudley (like lazing around and extra portions of dinner and watching lots of TV) were bad for Harry.

He should probably just find out whether the man was a demon or a dodgy bloke. It was just before midnight on the last day of April and Harry was miles from Privet Drive, stood at the centre of a dirt crossroads bordered by a bunch of fields, just outside Little Whinging. If it was a dodgy bloke then he was buggered. There was nowhere to run and no one to get help from.

Not that Harry expected any help. Seven years and nine months was old enough for him to know he was unloved, unwanted, and unimportant. People didn't help unloved, unwanted, unimportant boys.

"Are you a demon?"

The man smiled, blinked, and red spread through his eyes, like mist over a marsh, filling it from corner to corner until only his black pupils stared out amidst the bloody pools.

"What do you think?"

Harry swallowed, fighting a sudden urge to run away. "You're a demon."

"The name's Crowley," the demon said. He had a Cockney accent. He blinked again and the red receded from his eyes, leaving them a perfectly normal white and brown, looking Harry over. "You're a little one, aren't you? Bit beat up, too."

Harry straightened his back and puffed his chest out, but it didn't do much for his height. He always hated being the smallest boy in his year. Even some of the girls were bigger than him.

There was absolutely nothing to do about his injuries—a cast on his right arm, all the way up past his elbow, and his left eye unfocused and cloudy, blind and useless. Unseen to the demon, his face and ribs still ached slightly, and he had an itchy scar across his abdomen.

He slumped again. Sticking his chest out just made it hurt and it probably didn't make him look any less pathetic, especially with his hair getting greasy and his stupid eye. He could only be grateful the doctors said the vision in his other eye was still okay and he didn't need glasses. Being a four-eyes would make him look even more pathetic.

"What happened to you?" the demon asked.

Harry hesitated, but he had a feeling demons knew it if you lied, so answered honestly, "My uncle beat me up."

It was the first time he ever said it out loud. Uncle Vernon always said that if Harry ever complained about getting hit, someone would come and take him away and put him in an orphanage. An orphanage, Vernon said, was such a terrible place that Harry would find himself wishing he had something so spacious as a cupboard to sleep in. The work he'd have to do at an orphanage would make Aunt Petunia's chores seem like a luxury, and the violent older children would make Dudley look like an angel.

Harry often wondered if all that were really true, but he'd never been brave enough to find out.

"Besides," Vernon would tack on the end of these lectures, "you deserve to get smacked for being such a freak. Stop being abnormal and I won't have to beat you so much."

Harry never managed to figure out how, exactly, he was abnormal.

"Any particular reason he beat you up?"

Harry shrugged. "He was drunk," he admitted.

This incident had been unusually violent. Three weeks earlier, it had been Petunia and Vernon's tenth wedding anniversary. They held a party at the town hall, but Vernon got so drunk and belligerent that Petunia sent him home in a taxi, embarrassed. Harry had been attending because all their usual babysitters were also there, but Petunia had sent him home with Vernon, who, never able to accept his own failings, blamed the entire thing on Harry and started hitting him as soon as they get home.

Vernon had actually scared himself with how violent he became. He'd never hurt Harry so badly as to need medical help before, but this time he'd beat Harry into unconsciousness. Scared of retribution, he proceeded to stage a burglary, breaking the kitchen window and hiding Petunia's jewellery and Dudley's HiFi in the boot of the car to get rid of later, and then gone for a short walk. When he got back, he called the police and claimed the burglary happened while he was out. He got admonished for leaving Harry home alone, but that was all.

Harry had three broken ribs, internal bleeding, a cracked cheekbone and a fractured jaw, a broken arm, and an irreparably damaged optic nerve. By the time he woke up in hospital, everyone believed Vernon's story. Harry might even have believed it himself because he couldn't remember the actual attack, but Vernon insisted on sitting in when the police asked Harry about the burglar and glared furiously behind the police officer's back.

Harry could have said something then, but he'd nearly died because of Vernon and that left him afraid—too afraid to admit the truth while Vernon was in the room, and too afraid afterwards that no one would believe him if he changed his story. Why should they? No one believed him when he said Dudley broke the sugar jar while trying to get at the biscuit tin, or when he swore Dudley flushed his homework down the toilet, or when he insisted he hadn't climbed on the school roof. His aunt and uncle made sure everyone thought he was a liar and a scoundrel, so he stopped expecting help and support from anyone.

Except now. This was his one last hope.

"Nasty," Crowley commiserated. "So, how can I help you? Want me to kill this uncle for you?"

Harry didn't expect that. He almost said yes, because if Vernon was dead then he could definitely never hurt Harry again and that was great, but it wasn't perfect, and it wasn't what he'd come all this way to ask for. He'd stolen money from Petunia and skipped school yesterday and walked for miles to do this. He couldn't give up his plan just for Vernon's death.

He shook his head. "I want you to give me power."

There was a pause, then Crowley said, "You're going to have to be a bit more specific. Political power? Physical power? Magical power?"

"I have magic. Or I did. I can't do it anymore."

He'd figured out he was magic years ago and practised ever since. He could make small things float, which was cool but kind of useless. Except in the weeks since his uncle's last attack, he couldn't even do that much.

"I want to be able to protect myself. My uncle, he… can you do it? Can you give me the power to defend myself?"

Crowley smiled. "I can do it, alright. The real question is: are you willing to pay the price?"

"My soul, right? That's what the book said."

He'd found it in the Little Whinging public library's occult section. He spent every Wednesday evening in there for the last two years, while Dudley was at football and Petunia at her book club. He'd been looking for something to tell him about magic, hoping to find instructions on how to do more than just make things float, but what he'd found were instructions to summon demons.

He'd been disappointed originally, and sceptical because the instructions weren't even very magical. All he had to do was bury a box with a picture of himself (obtained at a photobooth because the Dursleys never took any), a yarrow plant (found at the local abandoned hospital), a handful of graveyard dirt (easily grabbed from the local church), and the bone of a black cat (bought from the weird shop in town that Petunia always made them cross the road to pass). It all had to be buried at a crossroads, which didn't seem very magical to Harry.

After Vernon's attack, he'd been willing to try anything, and extremely glad to discover it worked.

"That's right," the demon said. "Not immediately, of course. You get ten years."

Harry nodded. "That's a long time."

"I suppose for one so young, it is." Crowley inhaled deeply, smiled widely, and approached Harry. "If you're sure then."

"Do I need to sign something in blood?"

Crowley laughed. "Nah, nothing so cliché. I just need a little kiss."

Harry's face scrunched up. "A kiss?"

"I'm afraid so. Just pretend I'm your aunt or something."

"I never kissed my aunt."

"Oh. Well then. Just close your eyes; it'll be done in a jiffy."

Harry eyed him warily as Crowley crouched down in front of him and leant forward. He instinctively leant away then forced himself to stop. He needed this power. He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists, standing perfectly still. He felt a pressure against his lips for three seconds, then it was gone and he opened his eyes to see Crowley straightening up. The demon stepped back a little and tugged his clothes straight.

"See you in ten years, little one."

Harry nodded and watched him walk away. In between one step another, Crowley disappeared without so much as a pop.

Harry looked down at himself. He didn't feel any different. He looked around, saw a rock, and thought of making it fly. It instantly leapt up into the air. Harry grinned. The rock dropped, he imagined it turning into a giant worm and it did, then it turned back at his wish.

He looked down at himself again, thought of flying, and steadily lifted into the air. His grin turned to laughter—the first time he'd laughed in weeks—when he realised that he could actually _fly_. He could twist and turn and swoop like a bird and it was the most thrilling thing he'd ever done.

* * *

He flew home in less than half the time it took him to walk out. He'd snuck out the front door several hours earlier, but now he went straight to his bedroom window, made it swing open even though it'd been locked from the inside, and climbed carefully though.

He hadn't always had a bedroom. He remembered a time when he was younger that he'd slept in the cupboard under the stairs, but now his aunt and uncle only put him in that for punishment. He was sure they would love to stuff him in it permanently, but there was someone that stopped them.

A few years ago, Harry thought that someone was Father Christmas. He'd thought so because he was sure that whoever made his aunt and uncle give him a bedroom also gave him birthday and Christmas presents. He never saw them, but every 31st July and 25th December, he woke up to find a gift wrapped in silver paper at the foot of his bed, a white card stuck to it with only his name and either birthday wishes or seasons greetings—never a signature or even an initial to say who it was from.

The present was always the same, too: Famous Figurines, a box of four 8-inch figurines, each a different collection. The very first had been the Hogwarts' Founders edition, but there was also the Potion Makers, Ministers of Magic, Hogwarts' Headmasters, Alchemists… nine boxes totalling thirty-six figures, and all of them magic. They would move by themselves and he knew they were all witches and wizards because they had wands. It'd helped Harry on his realisation that he was a wizard, too, despite his aunt and uncle's insistence that magic wasn't real.

Harry adored them, having no other toys at all, but sometimes he couldn't stand to even look at them, because they were evidence that there was someone out there who knew about him and wanted to give him things, but didn't care enough to take him away. They knew his aunt and uncle didn't like him, and they even knew his uncle hurt him because Harry had once written a letter to Father Christmas saying as much and begging to be taken away, but they still left him there.

They'd definitely seen the letter, too—that was how he found out it wasn't Father Christmas. The year he wrote it, he tried to stay up all night to catch the jolly old man, but had fallen asleep. Something woke him during the night, however, and he found the letter gone and another present on his bed. He left to go to the bathroom, and on the way heard noises from his aunt and uncle's room.

Peering through the not-quite-shut door he saw a figure standing over their bed, gesturing emphatically and talking angrily but too quietly for Harry to hear. When the figure reached into their pocket and pulled out something that might have been a knife, Harry ran downstairs and called 999.

Later, when the police had been and gone and the figure vanished uncaught, Harry didn't understand why his aunt and uncle were so angry with him for calling the police. The kind police officer congratulated him and told him he did the right thing and that he'd been brave, but as soon as they left and the street outside was no longer flashing red and blue, Vernon and Petunia turned angry glares on him, gave him a slap 'round the head, and stuck him in the cupboard for a day.

He never heard back from Father Christmas, and no one came to take him away.

That wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was that this person, whoever it was, _had_ taken him away once—and then brought him back. Harry's memories of the time were vague because he'd been four years old and so sick with fever that nothing seemed real. The one thing he was sure of was someone coming to fetch him from Privet Drive, taking him to a place that smelt of wood smoke and unusual plants, and then _bringing him back_.

That had been the point when he realised that, even though someone out there wanted to give him presents and make sure he didn't die, no one cared to actually keep him safe, let alone happy.

Once back in his room, he carefully shut and locked the window, then stood listening. Reassuring snores came from his uncle and when he pressed his ear to the wall he could hear snuffles from Dudley's room. He could hear nothing of Aunt Petunia, which hopefully meant she was fast asleep, too.

He didn't intend to stay long. When he decide to make a deal with the demon, he also decided it was time to run away. He never had before because he wasn't sure he could survive. He knew now that he was more likely to survive on the streets than here. Vernon hadn't touched him since he put Harry in the hospital, but Harry knew it was only a matter of time.

The only reason he came back now was for supplies. He found his school backpack and magicked it so it was bigger on the inside, just like Mary Poppins. (A film he'd watched at school; the Dursleys wouldn't let him or Dudley watch it at home.) He then stuffed in all his Famous Figurines, a few pairs of underpants, a t-shirt, and a pair of jeans, then he crept out his room.

Listening carefully for other movement, he snuck downstairs, avoiding the creaky step, and into the kitchen. Stealing the biscuit tin, several bags of crisps, and a bunch of chocolate bars was simple enough; he didn't even have to drag a chair over to climb up to the top cupboards—he just levitated them down.

He was clutching his collection to his chest when he heard the creak of the stairs. He froze in the middle of the kitchen, staring at the door. He couldn't leave—the door opened straight into the hallway, right in view of whoever was by now at the bottom of the stairs. He couldn't go out the backdoor because they'd hear, and there was nowhere for him to hide.

The door handle twisted. Harry moved over to one wall, crisps breaking as his arms tightened fearfully around his stolen food, and thought hard, Don't see me. Don't see me. Don't see me.

* * *

Across the country, a spinning top in the headmaster's office of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry stopped turning and clattered to a halt on its spindly-legged table.

* * *

The door opened. Dudley's head stuck through, peered around, and then the rest of his fat body followed. He looked around again and his eyes passed straight over Harry, never even noticing him. Grinning, Dudley went to the table, pulled out a chair, and dragged it to the counters. He clambered up and pulled open the cupboard with the biscuit tin only to find it gone. He dug around, searching behind tins of soup and baked beans, then searched all the other cupboards before eventually giving up.

He took a pack of crisps instead, tore into them and ate them quickly. He left the empty packet on the floor, added a chocolate bar wrapper to it, and then scurried away, wiping chocolate from his mouth. In the morning, he would blame the mess on Harry no doubt.

Harry sighed with relief as he heard Dudley climb the stairs again. Eager to get going, he slipped out after Dudley, flying up the stairs instead of walking, and crept back into his bedroom while Dudley was in the bathroom. He added his stolen food to his backpack, tugged the zips closed, but then he yawned.

He'd been fighting it since he got back, running on adrenaline and excitement, but all of a sudden the exhaustion overwhelmed him. It was no surprise given the hour, especially after his long walk earlier, but he'd hoped he could at least leave Privet Drive that night. He knew now that it was impossible. He'd fall asleep before he even got halfway down the street.

Reluctantly, he pushed his backpack under the bed and climbed onto it, reaching for the purple teddy bear sitting against the pillows. Kiwi was another present from his mysterious gift giver, but Harry never felt resentful of her. He didn't even care when Dudley called him a baby for still having a teddy bear. Kiwi was too special for Harry to care about anything else. When he hugged her close and whispered, "I love you," Kiwi would nuzzle his chin and whisper back, "I love you, Harry."

When he felt bad, he liked to pretend it was his mother's voice.

He pulled her close now, not even bothering to undress or take off his shoes, and was asleep within moments. In a few hours his aunt would wake him up and kick him out the house, so he was out of the way while she did her bank holiday weekend cleaning. She used to make him help out with that, but now he was down an eye and a hand, his cordination was a bit dodgy and she didn't want him breaking anything.

He didn't mind getting kicked out. It meant no one would be looking for him for a while; by the time they wondered where he was, he'd be long gone, free of his so-called family. He wasn't sure where he'd go, but anywhere was better than here.

* * *

His aunt did indeed wake him up several hours later—by slamming his door open and storming into his room complaining, "How dare you steal from us, you—"

She broke off. Harry had fallen off the bed at the slam of the door, still clutching Kiwi and now sitting on the floor, staring at his aunt and aching from the fall. His aunt looked around the room, scowling and completely overlooking Harry just like Dudley had, then turned and stormed out.

"Boy!"

Harry got to his feet, listening to Petunia bang on the bathroom door.

"It's me, Pet," Vernon called.

"Where's that damned boy? He's been stealing from the kitchen."

"That rotten little… I'll teach him a bloody lesson."

That was all Harry needed to hear. He got to his feet, yawning and wanting to go back to bed, and pulled his backpack out from under the bed. A little magic made it weigh no more than it would empty and he pulled it on. Not wanting to meet with his aunt or uncle, even if they couldn't see him, he pushed open the window, climbed out, and flew off. He never once looked back.

He flew to the train station, where he settled on the roof of the waiting room to hunker down and eat a breakfast of crisps and chocolate. He intended to only stay there until the morning rush was gone, but he ended up falling asleep.

He woke up a few hours later when it started raining. There was a train coming in and he didn't bother to check where it was headed before he got on. He found a seat and was lucky enough to be able to stay there for the entire trip, few enough people boarding that he wasn't forced to move. He did get worried when a lady sat next to him, but she put her single bag up on the luggage rack and never reached into his seat.

Eventually the train pulled into Waterloo station at London. Harry waited for everyone else to disembark then got off himself. The station was busier than the train had been so he flew up, leaving through the train entrance rather than the street exit. He had no idea where to go or what to do, but he was free and that was all that mattered.

London was massive. He'd come once before with the Dursleys, but they'd only visited the zoo and they drove down, limiting his experience of the city. Now, with nothing to keep him from walking from one end to the other except his own exhaustion, he came to realise just how huge London was.

He didn't walk the length of the city, of course. He was still tired and his legs ached from walking so much last night. He flew to avoid people, but only until he came across some slums filled with homeless folks. There were condemned and crumbling buildings around, but these were all claimed and jealously guarded and, with his new magic, the streets were no problem for him so he didn't bother sneaking in, preferring to avoid people. He found a quiet corner and some discarded cardboard boxes, conjured a sleeping bag and enchanted the boxes to hold against wind and rain, and crawled in them to sleep.

* * *

A week after Harry vanished from Little Whinging, someone broke into Number 4, Privet Drive and brutally assaulted Vernon Dursley. He was hospitalised with a broken arm, a dislocated jaw, three cracked ribs, and internal bleeding. When he was released from the hospital, the Dursleys moved away from Little Whinging, both ashamed of the negative attention Harry's disappearance caused and fearful for their safety.

* * *

For the next three years, London was Harry's life. He stole to feed himself, he slept on the streets with the protection of magic to make it comfortable, and he almost never made himself visible. He quickly got over any guilt about stealing; he only took what he needed and it beat the alternative of begging, which meant being visible. He learnt not to do that.

Loneliness drove him to reveal himself a couple of times, trying to fit in with the other homeless kids, but one time a leering man offered him money if he would let the man touch his privates. Another time some woman saw the scar on his forehead, shrieked his name, and tried to kidnap him, but the worst had been waking up one morning to find a strange man trying to undress him. After that, he decided it was safer to just stay constantly invisible, no matter how lonely he got.

He didn't know how the lady kidnapper knew his name, but it made him decide to change it, something he'd been thinking about since leaving the Dursleys. Harry Potter was a pathetic little freak who got hurt by the only family he had; he was insignificant and weak and unloved. Harry Evans was none of those things; Harry Evans was a tough, self-sufficient wizard who wouldn't let anyone hurt him.

He passed most of his days in libraries. Books helped him stave off the loneliness and taught him about the world in absence of official schooling. He didn't want to become stupid and, without the restriction of a government curriculum, he was able to read about the things that really interested him.

He neglected maths—something he'd always struggled with—to focus mostly on geography, history, and science. He found most biology quite disgusting, and chemistry was a touch boring when he could only learn the theory, but he liked learning the laws of physics just to see if he could break them.

History was his favourite, however. He liked reading about old kings and queens, wars from centuries ago, the hardships and struggles from times before electricity and the ways people nevertheless made a good life for themselves. At least when they weren't dying of plague or getting executed by religious fanatics and insane monarchs.

Geography in and of itself held little interest to him, except for one thing—he wanted to find Hogwarts. He figured it was a school, given that his Famous Figurines included a Hogwarts' Headmasters edition, and he wanted to find it. He was sure it was a school for wizards and he thought that if he could find it, he might finally find somewhere he could belong.

He had only two significant problems living on the streets. The first was epilepsy; he never suffered it before, but after finding himself lying on the ground several times, cheeks and tongue bitten up, his entire right side weak, head pounding, he got worried enough to do some research. He couldn't be absolutely sure, of course, but it also fit with the fact that he would often lose entire minutes of time and end up confused and oddly tired, and the books he read said brain injuries could cause it.

The doctors hadn't said anything specific about his brain after Vernon's attack, but it seemed plausible. He considered going to a hospital or doctor's surgery, but he knew he'd never get medical attention without an adult accompanying him. Eventually he decided there was nothing to be done and convinced himself that it'd be fine. He'd managed until now; he could manage for longer.

The second problem was a bad tendency to lose control of his magic when he got emotional. He named it Wish Magic, because mostly he just had to make a wish and it would happened, but when he found himself getting depressed the objects around him would start to rot and he actually killed a patch of grass once. When he got angry, like when he saw a girl doing some truly nasty things to a box of abandoned kittens, things had a tendency to explode.

The girl was scared witless by a pile of exploding rubbish bags, which Harry felt smug about, but after taking the kittens to a pet shelter he came back to find the alley cordoned off by police and mutters of _bombs_ and _terrorists_ among the crowd. Police presence was never good for the homeless community, so he knew he'd have to avoid doing it again.

* * *

There was some confusion and minor panic at Hogwarts when, at the start of July 1991, Minerva McGonagall went through the list of possible students for the upcoming year, and found the name Harry Potter missing. She checked the maths, but he was definitely meant to be on it for the next year.

There was also a name, Harry Evans, with no address. The list automatically picked up a location on students, but by Harry Evans there was only blank space, something she'd never seen happen before. Dumbledore was the one who considered that perhaps Harry Evans _was_ Harry Potter. It didn't help them find him, but it did explain why Harry Potter's name had vanished.

* * *

Shortly after his eleventh birthday, Harry found the Leaky Cauldron. He was walking along, trying to decide whether he wanted to go to the library and read or to the local hangout for teens and scare them by pretending to be a ghost, when it started to rain and he ducked into the pub for shelter before he got completely soaked.

He didn't think much of it at first; the pub's patrons might be a little weirder than usual—there were a lot of cloaks instead of coats and a general air of _different_ to them all—but it was warm, dry, and someone left half a cottage pie unattended on a table. He took the entire plate and accompanying fork, tucked himself in a corner to eat it where he wouldn't get bumped, then left the empty plate on a different table.

There was a second door out of the pub and he assumed it led to a garden for outdoor drinking, at least until he went to check if the rain was easing off and looked into a small courtyard just in time to see a hole appear in the brick wall opposite, widening until it was large enough for a haughty-looking blonde woman and her pointy-faced son to walk through and go into the pub. Harry hopped out the way then quickly went through the hole before it could close. He stopped on the other side, looking around at a street unlike any he'd ever seen before.

He walked along, inspecting the shop displays, astonished by the strange things in the windows. Stacks of cauldrons, obscure plants and insects in jars, broomsticks, owls, robes, and all manner of bizarre instruments. The flavours at the ice cream shop included several that he'd never even imagined, the sweet shop sold nothing he'd ever seen before, and the toy shop had more extravagant delights than anything he'd dreamed of playing with.

When he saw a display of _Famous Figurines_ and realised there were plenty more sets that he didn't have, he was very tempted to break his rule about only stealing what he needed, but made himself turn away without taking one. Flourish and Blotts delighted him even more. Books shelved themselves and hovered off the floor unquestioned, there were titles that don't even make any sense, and every single book was about magic.

He always assumed there must be other magic people. Besides being able to do magic even before his demon deal, someone had obviously made his Famous Figurines and they themselves must have been witches and wizards. But there had always been that tiny little bit of doubt, that fear that he'd somehow enchanted the figurines himself and he was the only real wizard in the whole world, doomed to a life of loneliness. Now he knew he wouldn't be. He'd finally found somewhere he might be able to fit in and for the first time in years he thought about making himself visible.

When he found a book called _Hogwarts: A History_ , he finally broke his 'only what I need' rule. He waited until that particular aisle of the store was empty long enough to snatch a copy off the shelf and stuff it in his bag then left the shop.

"Hey! You, stop!"

He spun. The store clerk had yelled, but their focus was on a witch who'd left the store at the same time as Harry. "Miss, I need to check your bags."

"I'm not a thief!" the woman protested, and Harry backed away. He hadn't seen any alarms, but this was a magic shop so perhaps there were charms to detect thieves. He felt a stab of guilt and thought about returning the book, but… _Hogwarts_. He couldn't resist finally learning about the one place he'd dreamt of for years.

He wasn't even a quarter of the way through the massive book before deciding he was going. He didn't even care that he hadn't got a letter; he should have, he thought. He was more than magical enough, but maybe it just couldn't find him while he was invisible all this time, not to mention homeless. He'd just sneak onto the Hogwarts Express.

He wanted to see the castle, to explore its corridors and sleep in its dormitories. He didn't know which house he'd be in but he liked the Slytherin snake for a symbol, even though the Gryffindor lion was pretty cool and Godric was his favourite of the Famous Figurines. He wanted to learn about charms and transfiguration and potions, even though he was sure he could do anything they would teach with just a wave of his hand. He wanted to become a real wizard.

On his second trip to Diagon Alley, after he finished _Hogwarts: A History_ and wanted to read more, he learnt about himself. He learnt about Voldemort and the truth behind his parents' death, about his own history and his nickname and the legend of Harry Potter.

He didn't return to Diagon Alley for three days. He wandered normal—Muggle, he remembered—London and thought about himself and what the books said about him. He wondered why he ended up living on the streets if he was as revered as they said, wondered why he'd been put with the Dursleys in the first place, wondered what the wizarding world would think if they learnt their hero was a street rat.

He returned to Flourish and Blotts to read more, learning about the war against Voldemort, but avoided as much as he could about himself. He wasn't Harry Potter any more; Harry Potter got left in Little Whinging. He was Harry Evans now and Harry Evans wasn't a hero. He was just a boy looking out for himself.

He visited Diagon Alley regularly over the next few weeks, learning everything he could from the books in Flourish and Blotts, visiting all the shops, and occasionally stealing left over ice cream from outside Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour.

On the first of September, he went to King's Cross station early. He didn't want to risk missing the Hogwarts Express and he knew that King's Cross could get busy. He already knew how to get onto platform nine and three-quarters, having read about it, but he loitered on platform ten and waited until he saw several people slipping through the stone wall before he tried it himself.

The Hogwarts Express was magnificent. He'd never been interested in trains much. He long ago learnt how to teleport, to simply Wish himself from one place to another, so modes of transport weren't much interest to him, but he had to admit that the Hogwarts Express was beautiful.

He boarded the train and settled in an empty compartment, watching through the window as children said goodbye to their parents. Other kids ran up and down the train's corridor, shouting and laughing. For a second Harry doubted his decision to get on a train that would be crammed with children for the next six or so hours, but then he saw an elderly woman wave a wand and levitate a trunk onto the train and he knew he had to do this.

Ten minutes before the train was due to leave, a weedy looking boy about the same age as Harry entered the compartment, carrying a book and wearing robes without a house crest on the front. He shut the door against the noise of the corridor, sat down opposite Harry with a sigh, and opened his book. Harry tried to see what it was called, but he couldn't make out the title without alerting the boy to his presence. Whatever it was, it made the boy snigger regularly.

Harry slipped out when several other students entered the compartment. He didn't want to get found and he hid in the first bathroom he came to until the train set off. When he heard the engine whistle and the first jolt of movement, his heart jumped into his throat. This was it. There was no turning back now.

* * *

Trains were always a bad idea. His initial trip to London aside, Harry had ventured onto the underground a few times just for the fun of it and a busy carriage was a terrible place to be.

It didn't get much busier than a few hundred excited children, as well as their pet owls, cats, and a few toads. One boy named Neville lost his toad and he and a girl called Hermione were looking for it.

It didn't help that a woman with a food trolley moved down the train, followed the whole time by impatient, hungry kids. Harry had no chance of getting close to it and was glad he'd stuffed a sandwich, pack of crisps, and a couple of chocolate bars in his bag that morning. He sought refuge by the roof as he ate, the only place that was really out of the way. Even after he finished, he still hovered by the roof, watching the children below him with a growing sadness.

He'd never had a friend. Since making his own way, he never really even spoke to anyone. Folks didn't make a lot of conversation with invisible people. Sometimes he wished he knew what it was like to have someone you could call a friend, but he always decided that invisible was safer, no matter how lonely it was.

It was dark when the train finally pulled into a station. Harry disembarked last, waiting until it was clear to float down and jump off. Most students were heading towards the end of the platform, but the youngest ones were crowding around a giant of a man. Curious as to why they were separate and preferring small groups to lots of people right then, Harry followed them. The giant man led them to a lake, over which Hogwarts loomed in the darkness.

It made Harry stop in mid-flight, staring in awe. The pictures in _Hogwarts, A History_ didn't do it justice. The castle before them was gorgeous, a huge, sprawling, sparkling mess of turrets and towers and walls. It was incredible. He swore he could almost hear it calling out to him. This was more than just a castle. There was magic in the very foundations.

He spent so long staring at the castle that he almost missed the boats. He noticed them just as the first ones set off and he flew after them. At the other side of the lake, after ducking through a curtain of ivy to a cave in the cliff face, they disembarked and followed the giant man into the castle where he handed them off to a stern witch in green robes who introduced herself as Professor McGonagall.

She took the students into a small side room, but there was voices coming from a large room on the other side of the entrance hall and Harry went in there. He almost got walked into when he stopped just inside the door, staring around in awe. The hall was huge, but what really caught his attention was the ceiling—there didn't appear to be one. Curious, he flew up and realised it must be an enchantment of some kind when he broke through the starry night sky and found wooden beams and a solid ceiling.

Shortly after, McGonagall brought in all the younger students. Once they were lined up at the front of the hall, she set a hat on a stool, and after an expectant moment of silence the hat opened at the brim and began to sing. When it stopped, McGonagall began calling student names and they went up to get sorted.

Harry watched with heavy heart, second guessing his decision to come to Hogwarts. He thought he could find somewhere he could fit in, but how could he? He was invisible, unknown and unwanted. He might be at Hogwarts be he'd never be a student—he wouldn't find a family in one of the houses, wouldn't be able to join in with classes, wouldn't be able to make friends or complain about homework or sneak out on midnight adventures with his dorm mates.

Hogwarts might be a place of magic and wonder, but it was no more his home than the streets of London.

When the sorting was over, Harry followed McGonagall out to a side room where she left the stool and hat, presumably to be returned to their homes at a later time. There was a second door to leave through, but he hesitated to go, looking at the hat. For the last hour it'd been sitting on heads and shouting out houses. He approached it. Could he…? No. Even if the hat did… he couldn't really join any of the houses. He'd never be a part of them.

He reached out. The hat was old, the material cracked, worn, and full of wrinkles. He hesitated. Should he? He was curious about what the hat would say, where it would put him, but at the same time he wasn't sure he wanted to know there was somewhere he _could_ belong but can't.

He couldn't help himself. He put the hat on and almost jerked it off again when the voice rattled inside his head.

 _Well now, this is interesting. You've been missing for a long time, Harry Potter._

"That's not my name," he told the hat.

 _No, I can see that,_ the hat said thoughtfully.

"Are you going to sort me?"

 _What would be the point of that? You don't need sorting._

He knew it. He didn't belong anywhere. Even a talking hat knew he didn't belong.

 _You're quick to jump to conclusions, Mr Evans._

"You said—"

 _That you don't need sorting. You have a place to belong; everyone does. You just need to find it. I think you'll find it closer than you think._

"What do you mean?"

 _You'll figure it out. For now, take advantage of this opportunity. You're in the best magical school Europe has to offer. Attend some classes, practice some magic, explore a little… Welcome to Hogwarts, Harry Evans._

The hat told him of a room on the seventh floor, opposite a tapestry, that'd become a bedroom if he asked for it. The hat gave him directions but he still managed to get lost, probably because of the moving staircases.

He was wandering around a corridor when the students appeared. Clearly the feast was over and everyone was returning to their houses. He tagged onto a group in Gryffindor robes and followed them to a life-size portrait of a fat lady in a pink dress. The prefect leading them said clearly, " _Caput Draconis,_ " and the portrait swung open to show a hole in the wall. As the students scrambled through, Harry looked past them, seeing a cosy room with squishy arm chairs and red drapes on the wall.

He turned away. The Gryffindor common room looked nice, friendly, welcoming. But he didn't belong there. It wasn't his home and it never would be.

Tired and more miserable than he thought he'd be on reaching Hogwarts, he found a classroom, conjured himself some blankets, and curled up to sleep, hoping things would look better in the morning.

* * *

 **Author's Note:** I would like to politely request that anyone who's read the original version of this fic refrains from leaving reviews that include spoilers for events which haven't happened yet. If you have questions, feel free to PM me, or send an ask to my tumblr (link on profile).


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

The sound of footsteps woke Harry the next morning. He was hungry and needed to pee, the first of which could wait, but he had to find a bathroom. He found one a couple of floors down from where he slept, used the toilet, splashed some water on his face, and headed out again. There were more people around by then and he tagged after a group of Ravenclaw girls who led him to the Great Hall.

He'd left before dinner was served the night before, so the sight of four tables heaving with food was enough to make his mouth water; he'd never seen so much in one place. He reached between students to snatch pieces of toast and munch on them. If anyone noticed food vanishing into thin air, they didn't say anything.

Four teachers made their way down the tables, handing out timetables to all the students. Harry peered over the shoulder of a Ravenclaw first year called Lisa Turpin. She had Potions for her first class and he tagged along after her and her friend Padma Patil when they headed off.

Professor Snape, the Potions Master, was scary, with dark, piercing eyes that made Harry thankful he was invisible. Snape was one of those teachers that could silence a room with just a glance and he had no qualms about using that ability.

The Ravenclaws shared their lesson with the Hufflepuffs and they made a simple cure for boils. Harry sat on a spare stool beside a Ravenclaw boy called Michael Corner and watched, wishing he could join in. Michael ruined his potion, putting the wartcap powder in late, and the potion turned into a thick green sludge. Snape bore down on him with his eyes glinting.

"Mr Corner, you appear to have been sorted into the wrong house. I expect this level of stupidity from Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs, but Ravenclaws are supposed to be intelligent."

Harry stared at Snape. He only had a few years' experience in schools, but he was pretty sure teachers shouldn't say things like that to students. No one said anything though.

" _Scourgify_ ," Snape murmured, waving his wand over the green sludge. It disappeared. "I suggest you learn to read. Perhaps then you'll be able to follow instructions properly."

They had a twenty minute break after potions. The Hufflepuffs vanished off by themselves and the Ravenclaws headed for the third floor—they had Transfiguration next and collected outside the classroom to discuss the Potions lesson. They all agreed that Professor Snape was too harsh, but Michael accepted that he messed up. Harry thought they should be more bothered by Snape's behaviour, but maybe he was wrong. He hadn't been in a school since he was seven; it wasn't as if he knew what teachers were supposed to be like.

After Transfiguration, Harry didn't go to lunch with the Ravenclaws. He had his fill of company for the day and he still had a few apples in his backpack from breakfast. He munched on one and thought about how he'd like to have a wand so he could try out the spell they learnt in Transfiguration. It didn't matter than he could conjure a matchstick, turn it into a needle and back again, then vanish it, all with just a thought. He wanted to try out doing real magic like everyone else.

The next few days passed in much the same way. He attended classes with Ravenclaw first years, and studied in the library when he got sick of watching people do things without him. The Hogwarts library had a greater selection of books than even Flourish and Blotts and he delighted in reading as much as he could, especially about history.

He always considered himself pretty informed on the subject, but now he discovered an entire secret world with a completely different history to learn about and it was even more interesting than Muggle history. It was just a shame History of Magic classes were such a disappointment; he really looked forward to them—what could be better than being taught history by a _ghost_?—but it proved to be the dullest class in the whole school.

He fashioned himself a bedroom in an empty classroom that, although clean, was stacked with spare desks and obviously unused. He moved the desks out, conjured himself some furniture and rugs, and decorated the walls. By the time he was done, it was, in his opinion, the best bedroom any eleven year old could want. All it lacked was a decent bathroom, but he solved that when he eventually found the Room of Requirement entirely by accident.

He was exploring the castle one evening when he came across the tapestry that the Sorting Hat described. He followed the instructions it gave him and a door appeared in the wall, leading into a big, bright, clean bathroom, much to his delight. For the first time in years, he washed himself with actual water. He'd kept himself clean with magic all this time, but it didn't give that same clean feeling as water and soap, and he stayed in the bath until his skin was wrinkled.

With a room to sleep in, a bathroom to use, and regular food, the first half of the term passed quickly. Harry found a good routine of classes—for the most part he attended the Ravenclaw first year lessons, but he skipped some to go to a few third year Ancient Runes and Arithmancy classes. They didn't involve much magic so they provided him with a genuine challenge, even if he did struggle with the mathematic parts of the Arithmancy.

He didn't eat with the other students. The Great Hall just got too busy for him to easily manoeuvre. He would go down early to breakfast, as soon as the food appeared but before the majority of students turned up, to grab some toast and stuff some fruit into his backpack for lunch. At dinner, he would go in after everyone else was finished to grab a plateload of whatever was left. He spent his lunch hour in the library, revelling in the peace and quiet.

He was still getting used to spending so much time around other people—especially children. He didn't enjoy being around people when he couldn't interact with them; it depressed him, seeing everything he could potentially be a part of but never actually able to join them.

He often saw Hermione Granger in the library, studying hefty books he was pretty sure weren't normal first year reading materials. She looked lonely and sometimes he actually contemplated making himself visible, just for short periods, and getting into a conversation with her about the books she read. He read them afterwards, and they definitely weren't first year material but they were interesting and useful. But she'd want to know what house he was in and his name and his year and he wouldn't be able to explain that he snuck into the school, because for all Hermione's intelligence she was a stickler for the rules and if she found out the truth then she'd tell a teacher.

On the other hand, he didn't think much of Ron Weasley, who was loud, boisterous, and got into fights with Draco Malfoy a lot. Harry didn't think much of him either. Malfoy was just as rude as Ron, insulting anyone who wasn't a Slytherin and acting like he was superior to everyone else, but at least he was open about his dislike. Ron mocked Hermione's thirst for knowledge and Neville Longbottom's clumsiness and nerves, but acted like he wasn't a bully for doing so.

Harry's first time on a broom was at the dead of night, during the September full moon. He broke into the broom shed and pulled out the least worn looking broomstick, grinning from ear to ear. He took it to the Quidditch pitch, eagerly threw a leg over the broom, took a deep breath, gripped it hard, and kicked off.

It wasn't like flying on his own, which required control and concentration. On the broom he whizzed about with careless abandon, relying entirely on the thin stick of wood to keep him airborne. The wind rushed past his ears, his hair whipped about behind him, and he felt a fierce rush of joy.

He stayed in the air until it started to rain. He was freezing from his ears to his toes—his fingers had gone stiff around the broom handle—but he didn't care. It was the most fun he could ever remembering having.

* * *

Hallowe'en was a festive time in the castle. There was no trick-or-treating at Hogwarts, but there was a massive feast at the end of the day that was accompanied by ghostly entertainment. The Gryffindor house ghost, Nearly Headless Nick, re-enacted his own botched beheading whilst the Bloody Baron, the Slytherin house ghost, rattled his chains and popped up behind unsuspecting students to wail in their ears.

For once, Harry stuck around during dinner, hovering above the tables, taking his own opportunities to tap people's shoulders or drop bits of pumpkin on them. Hallowe'en was the one time of the year he could act out and get away with it.

He overheard Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown mention that Hermione was in the girls' bathroom, crying because Ron insulted her earlier. When Harry left the Great Hall—before the meal was over, because even frightening people was only so much fun—he thought of going to the bathroom with a vague notion of comforting Hermione. She didn't have any friends and he sympathised with that, but he still wasn't sure about revealing himself to her.

He passed a panicked looking Professor Quirrell on his way out, but didn't think much of it until he heard the uproar from the Great Hall. When the students started filing out and he heard of the troll, his first thought was _brilliant! I wonder if I can see it?_ and his second was _oh, crap, Hermione!_

He wanted to go after the troll, not so much because he wanted to go up against it, just that he wanted to see it; for all his magic and living at Hogwarts, there were still some things that felt as if they should live only in books, and trolls were one of those things, but he couldn't let Hermione go about unaware that there was a troll in the castle.

He headed for the bathroom Parvati and Lavender mentioned and slipped inside. He could hear someone sniffling in one of the cubicles, but that seemed to be the only one occupied. He didn't make himself visible, just called out, "Hermione?"

The sniffling stopped abruptly.

"Hermione, is that you?"

"Who's there?"

"It's… there's a troll in the school. Everyone's supposed to be going back to their houses."

He heard fumbling, the cubicle lock slid back, and the door opened forcefully. Hermione stepped out, angry tears in her eyes and a glare on her face.

"Oh, yes, that's very—" She broke off, eyes flicking around the seemingly empty room with surprise. Before Harry could decide whether or not to make himself visible, a foul smell and the noise of heavy, lumbering footsteps reached them.

The troll was twelve feet tall, grey-skinned, and dragging a large club by its side. Hermione shrieked, which unfortunately drew its attention to her and it let out a roar and advanced on her. She pressed herself flat against the far wall, mouth hanging open in terror as she stared at it.

"HEY! You! Over here!"

The troll paused and turned, its mean little eyes blinking stupidly at the now visible Harry, who suddenly second guessed himself.

"Hermione, run!" he yelled, backing up as the troll advanced on him instead, but Hermione was frozen to the wall. Harry's own back hit a wall and he swallowed, staring at the monstrous beast in front of him and wishing that trolls really did only exist in stories.

The troll lifted its club and Harry threw up a hand. "Stop!" he yelled, and the troll froze, its club still held up in the air, looking like nothing more than a statue. When a few seconds passed and it didn't move, he sidled along the wall until he was out of its view, but kept his eye fixed on it as he shimmied over to where Hermione stood, grabbing her hand and tugging her away from the wall.

Only when they were out of the bathroom and Harry slammed the door behind them did Hermione come to herself.

"How did you do that?" she asked.

He didn't answer. He could hear several people rushing down the next corridor and he only had time to urgently plead, "Don't tell them about me," and make himself invisible before McGonagall, Snape, and Quirrell came rushing around the corner.

"Miss Granger, what on earth are you doing here? Students are meant to be in their dormitories!"

"I…" She glanced around, clearly searching for Harry, but he was completely hidden. "I was in the bathroom and there was a—there's a troll in there, Professor!"

Quirrell whimpered. Snape went for the door, his wand in hand as he pushed it open, and McGonagall grabbed Hermione's shoulder and pulled her away. Snape stepped into the bathroom, looking up at the troll, which was still frozen in place.

"There was a boy," Hermione blurted, and Harry scowled angrily. "I don't know who—he came in and said there was a troll and I thought he was just trying to trick me, but then it turned up and when it came after me he shouted at it and it went after him and he just told it to 'stop' and it froze like that, and then he pulled me out of the bathroom and he heard you coming and he just vanished!"

The teachers didn't seem to know whether to believe her or not. After checking she wasn't hurt, McGonagall sent her back to Gryffindor with a warning that they'd want to hear more later, and Harry slunk off as well, leaving the teachers to look after the troll.

* * *

Hermione jumped when a figure appeared in the chair next to her while she was sat in the library the next morning. She was alone, as always, and hidden away in the corner. The boy appeared with no warning, simply materialising out of thin air. He had dark hair and green eyes, one of which was clouded and unfocused, and he wore jeans and a jumper and dropped a worn-looking backpack on the floor.

"You told them about me," he said accusingly, forgoing introductions or explanations.

Hermione bristled. "Well, what else was I meant to say? Who are you anyway? How did you defeat that troll? How did you just appear here? I've read _Hogwarts, A History_ ; I know you can't Apparate in the school."

The boy glanced away, head tilting slightly, and she noticed a mark on his forehead. When he looked back at her, she saw more clearly that it was a scar—a scar in the shape of a lightning bolt.

She gasped. "You're Harry Potter!"

He straightened in his seat and shushed her, glancing around in case anyone heard even though the only other people there were Madam Pince, at the front desk, and a few sixth years over in the Charms section.

"That's not my name. How did you know anyway?"

"Your scar…" She said, then blinked as it vanished from sight, leaning forwards to peer at his forehead. "But I thought…"

"Stop staring," he snapped.

She blinked, realised what she was doing, and leant back, blushing a little. "Sorry. But are you him?"

"Technically," he said begrudgingly. "But I don't use that name anymore and you can't tell anyone. It's Harry Evans."

"But you've been missing for years, haven't you? I've read about you in—"

"Yeah, so have I," he interrupted, scowling. "I'm still missing and I want to stay that way. If the teachers find out I'm here, they'll throw me out."

"Why would they do that?"

"I'm not a student. I never got a letter. I snuck into the school so you can't tell them I'm here. I just thought I should probably let you know that I'm real, in case you started thinking you just imagined me yesterday because of shock or whatever."

She had considered it, but mostly she'd wondered if he'd been a sort of anti-poltergeist. A being like Peeves, only one that helped students instead of dropping eggs on their heads. She hadn't heard of such a thing around school, but she preferred to think that than believe she was going insane. She was glad to find he was a real person.

"How did you stop the troll?" she asked curiously, then added, "Thank you, by the way, for saving me."

"It's fine," he said awkwardly. "It's called Wish Magic."

"I've never heard of that."

"I don't know if anyone else can do it. I named it myself. Do you promise not to tell anyone about me?"

Hermione bit at her lip, fighting against her natural urge to report rule breakers, but he did save her yesterday and if he hadn't she might well have been killed before the teachers arrived, so she nodded. "Alright. What's Wish Magic?"

"It's how I do magic. I Wish things, and they happen."

"So you just wished for the troll to stop?"

"Pretty much. Watch." He glanced around, double checking that Madam Pince wasn't approaching, and touched his finger to the table. A flower grew out of the centre and Hermione gasped, watching the stalk sprout up, two leaves growing off it, and a white rose head blossom on top.

"Oh, wow," Hermione breathed. She reached towards it, running her finger along the petals. "Oh my god, it's completely real. But how… I mean, you just wished for it?"

"Like I said, Wish Magic."

Footsteps approached their corner. Harry, his bag, and the flower all vanished just before Madam Pince rounded into their area, a pile of books floating alongside her. She nodded politely to Hermione, flicked her wand to direct the books onto their shelves, and then walked away again.

"I should go," Harry's disembodied voice said when she was gone.

Hermione started. "Are you invisible?"

She reached out to where he'd been and prodded what might have been a shoulder.

"Stop that. Yes, I'm invisible."

"Where are you going? Do you have to leave?"

"It's not really a good idea for me to stay here. Someone might see or hear me."

"We can go somewhere else," Hermione suggested, eager to talk more. This was the longest conversation she'd had with anyone all term. Aside from that, she wanted to know more about Harry and his magic. She hadn't even seen any of the teachers do what he could.

When he hesitated to respond, she added quickly, "I mean, if you don't mind. It's nice to talk to someone, that's all. But if you don't want to, that's okay."

"No. I mean, I don't mind. We can go somewhere else."

She smiled, although she felt awkward smiling at an invisible person. She began to pack up her things. "Where shall we go?"

"I know an empty classroom we can use."

"We're not supposed to use classrooms outside of lessons," she immediately said, then cringed. That was exactly how she ended up a loner in the first place.

But Harry just sounded amused as he said, "No one will know. Are you afraid of breaking a little rule? A stupid one at that."

She didn't like rule breaking, but she also didn't like being a loner. "Alright," she said, standing and then jumping slightly when he grabbed her hand.

"I'll show you."

He took her up two floors and into a classroom that, judging by the dust, hadn't been used in years. He let go of her hand, shut the door, and only then made himself visible again. For a moment they just looked at each other, fidgeting awkwardly, then Hermione blurted out, "If you're not a student, where do you sleep?"

Then she could have slapped herself. What a dumb question. What did it matter where he slept?

But Harry answered. "In classrooms. I conjure a sleeping bag and I can make the floor comfy and warm, so it's fine."

"But why'd you never get a letter? You're obviously a wizard. Where have you been all this time? The books never mentioned where you went to live after your parents were killed."

He looked away, hopping up to sit on a table, which then shifted into a comfy brown armchair. "I went to live with my aunt and uncle, but they didn't like me so now I live here. I saw you reading _An Anthology of Eighteenth-Century Charms_ the other day. What did you think of it?"

She was disappointed by the change of subject, but she had a feeling Harry would leave her if she tried to go back to talking about him, so she settled into the chair he transfigured for her and answered the question. To her surprise and delight, he actually listened to what she said and she soon forgot about asking personal questions as they got into a discussion on magical theory.

* * *

Dumbledore sat in his office, staring at the silver spinning top on his desk. The portraits told him that it moved the night before, right around dinner time, and Dumbledore heard from McGonagall about the dark-haired boy that supposedly saved Hermione Granger from the troll.

The top had spun only sporadically in the years since Harry Potter went missing from his aunt and uncle's house, occasionally whirling to life only to drop still once more within mere hours. He used to wonder if it was broken at those times. He designed it himself to monitor Harry's very life and the only time it should ever fall still was if Harry died.

When it stopped working the day he disappeared from Little Whinging, Dumbledore refused to believe that Harry was dead. It was ridiculous really, given that he created one for himself as well and did everything he could think of, short of tampering with the device itself, to trick it into thinking he was dead and it continued to spin. So Harry's should be working as well, but he preferred to tell himself that it was broken than imagine that Harry was dead.

But now he was certain it wasn't broken. Harry was here, at Hogwarts, hidden for some reason and by a magic more powerful than even Dumbledore's. Part of him was delighted—Harry was alive!—but part of him was deeply concerned. Only two kinds of people disguised themselves—those who were afraid and those who had something to hide. There was nothing for Harry to fear at Hogwarts, so what was he hiding?

And how?

* * *

Harry started to hang out with Hermione regularly, sometimes working together and sometimes just chatting. He commandeered the classroom next to his makeshift bedroom and converted it into an attached sitting room with various comfy seats for them to pick and chose from. As the weeks went on, he added books and a bookshelf, a chess set, a gobstones kit, some playing card, and Hermione brought a Monopoly board.

"Lavender and Parvati think it's boring," she told him. "I haven't had anyone to play with all term."

"I've never got to play it at all," he admitted. The Dursleys never let him join in board games, which never went on long anyway. Dudley either got bored, cheated and was called out on it (by his friends, at least, but not his parents), or started losing and threw a tantrum.

Initially Harry was reluctant to talk about himself, but over time as he grew to trust her, he told her a little more about himself. Sometimes he thought about lying, like when she asked, "Why did you stop living with your aunt and uncle? You said they didn't like you. What did you mean by that?"

He hesitated, sighed, stared up at the ceiling as he lounged in a beanbag. "My uncle used to hit me."

She gasped. He didn't look down.

"Ever since I can remember, he'd hit me if I did anything wrong, or even if he just thought I did something wrong, or… anyway, when I was seven he got really drunk and… and I ended up in hospital. That's why my eye doesn't work. Afterwards I ran away and started using my Wish Magic to hide myself."

He wasn't sure what to expect, but it wasn't to have Hermione scramble out of her squishy chair and throw herself down by his beanbag to wrap her arms around his neck in a fierce hug that made him flinch.

"That's awful," she said in a choked voice, and he realised she was crying. He patted her awkwardly on the back.

"It's fine, really. It was years ago. Please don't cry," he begged, half because he didn't know how to comfort her and half because it was making his own throat tighten uncomfortably. Unfortunately his words only made her cry harder. He swallowed thickly and blinked several times, forcing himself to not cry and focusing on her. "Really, Hermione, I'm… I'm okay. You don't have to cry."

She drew back, wiping at her eyes. He conjured a tissue and shifted awkwardly as she blew her nose, not sure what to say or do.

"But what about your aunt?" she asked. "Didn't she do anything to stop him?"

"Not really."

"That's horrible. I can't believe anyone would do that."

He shrugged. He knew it was horrible, in the sense that he hated it happening and he knew it was a bad thing, but he didn't really see it as horrible in the same way she did. For him, it was just the way things were and to have someone crying over him because of it made him feel uncomfortable.

Eager to get away from the subject, he cleared his throat and suggested a game of Monopoly. Hermione nodded, still sniffing slightly, and fetched the box. Harry took the boat, as he always did, while Hermione picked the out the boot for today. Harry enjoyed Monopoly, but he'd discovered an inclination to cheating. When his money got low, he had to fight the urge to Wish a few hundreds from the box.

They were half an hour in and Harry was taking his turn when Hermione asked, "Have you ever been in the third floor corridor?"

"The forbidden one? Once. Why?"

He hadn't meant to. He'd just been exploring one evening and came across a locked door; curious, he'd Wished it unlocked and only realised where he was when he laid eyes on a massive, three-headed dog standing in the middle of the corridor. He quickly left—the dog growled at the open door and started advancing, perhaps sensing there was someone there even if it couldn't see him—Wished the door locked again, and wondered why on earth an animal like that was locked up in a school.

"At the start of the year I got lost and ended up there—completely by accident, I wasn't trying to break the rules," she hurriedly said, and Harry smiled, moving the boat around to the Electric Company, "and well, I just wondered what you thought about the trap door."

Harry looked at Hermione, frowning. "What trap door?"

"Didn't you notice it? Under that great dog, there was a trap door."

"I was a bit preoccupied with the dog, got out pretty quick. But a trap door's not that surprising in this place. I mean, compared to staircases that _move_ …"

She laughed, picking up the dice to roll again. "I know. But it's just, did you hear about the break-in to Gringotts during the summer?"

"No. I thought no one could break in there."

"No one should, but it happened _and_ they got away. The papers said that the vault they tried to steal from had been emptied the very same day. I think it's possible that whatever's in there might be what's hidden under that trap door."

Harry frowned, thinking about it. "Bit of a stretch, isn't it? I mean, there's no connection between the trap door and the Gringotts break-in."

"That we know of. Also, I know that Professor Snape tried to get past that dog not long after Hallowe'en."

"That still doesn't create a connection between Gringotts and the trap door. If Snape tried to get past it, then clearly there's _something_ down there, but if you ask me it seems unlikely that it's the same as whatever might have been at Gringotts."

"Well, maybe. Hang on!" she cried when Harry went to roll his turn. "You didn't pay me for landing on the Electric Company on your last turn."

Harry grinned and tossed the dice. "You should have been paying attention. You already took your turn, so I don't have to pay up. Them's the rules."

* * *

Hermione and Neville weren't really friends. Hermione helped Neville in classes sometimes and they greeted each other with smiles in the morning, but they weren't what anyone would call proper friends. It was Neville who finally decided to change that, sick of being left out by the rest of the first year boys. Ron and Seamus made fun of him sometimes and although Dean didn't, he never stood up for Neville either.

He knew that befriending Hermione would probably mean a lot of hours spent in the library studying rather than doing other friend activities, but he figured it was worth it and it certainly wouldn't hurt him to study more given how he was the worst in almost all their classes.

Their friendship was tentative at first, and, as Neville expected, mostly focused around studying, but as the weeks went on and they got to know each other a little better they spent less time studying and more time just hanging out, and by the time Christmas rolled around, Neville was able to go home and tell his grandmother with complete honesty that he made a friend.

* * *

Harry got bored in the Christmas holidays. He'd grown used to spending time with Hermione and with her gone and lessons stopped for a few weeks, he had nothing much to do with himself, so he explored a lot, venturing to places in the castle he hadn't been before.

It was Christmas Eve when he found the mirror. It sat in an empty classroom, like someone put it there to keep it out of the way, and he looked closer just because he couldn't imagine why someone would try and hide a mirror.

It was impressive, he supposed, as far as mirrors went, standing on two clawed feet and sporting an ornate gold frame, with the words _Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi_ inscribed along the top. He went to it, standing in front of it and making himself turn visible, just because it was fun to watch sometimes, and then his heart almost jumped out of his chest because the figure in the mirror wasn't him.

Except after looking for a moment, he realised it was. Not him as he was now, but him older—maybe twenty or so. He had a wand in his hand, a healthy glow to his face, and a broad grin. He looked happy and Harry turned away, cloaking himself in invisibility as he ran from the room.

He never used to think about his demon deal much. At first it didn't mean much to him, but as the years went by and the time until his ten years were up got shorter, thinking about the demon deal only became painful. He didn't regret it—he still believed the power he gained was more than worth his soul—but every time he thought of it he remembered that he was never going to grow up properly. He would die before he even turned eighteen and that saddened him. He couldn't stand looking in the mirror at an image of what he could be, knowing he'd never become it.

He went flying on a broom that night, trying to forget what he'd seen, but what was supposed to cheer him up only made his mood worse. He felt a familiar tingling in his right arm, the kind he sometimes got before a convulsive seizure, but he lost awareness before he could fly lower.

The next thing he knew, he was on the ground, the taste of vomit in his mouth, his entire right side feeling weak, and his leg was twisted at a decidedly unnatural angle. The broom was still hovering some twenty feet above him. He could Wish his leg fixed, thankfully, but he was still left with an ache that didn't go away until he hobbled up to the Room of Requirement, had a long hot bath, and slept for eight hours.

But even that didn't ease the ache in his heart at realising he'd never be able to play Quidditch.

* * *

The new term began and Harry was glad to have people in the castle again, to get to hang out with Hermione. The first few weeks passed unremarkably, and in February, there was a Hogsmeade weekend for the older kids. Harry snuck out with them. He spent the morning wandering the village, looking in all the shops, stealing a box of Every Flavour Beans from Honeydukes and an unattended Butterbeer from the Three Broomsticks, and visited the Shrieking Shack, which didn't look haunted or scary in the bright winter sunlight.

He sat with Hermione in his sitting room that evening, telling her about the village. She listened with interest, looking forward to her third year when she could visit herself.

"I could sneak you out," he offered, mostly so he could watch her shiver and shake her head.

"I could get caught. I'd get in so much trouble!" She shook her head again. "I'll wait. It'll be more fun to go when I have permission. Anyway, I have something else to talk to you about." She reached for her bag and pulled out a book with multiple little sticky notes marking the pages. She opened it up to one of the marked pages and handed it over.

"I think you have epilepsy," she said. "Sometimes you zone out and your face and hands twitch. I looked it up and I think you might be having seizures—not convulsive ones, like most people probably think of seizures where your whole body shakes, but small ones. They're called absence seizures. Epilepsy can be caused by brain trauma and after what you told me about your uncle, I think that might be it."

He was impressed at her dedication to the research and touched by her concern, but he could tell by the look in her eye that she wanted him to get help.

"I'm fine, Hermione. It's just little ones."

"It can be dangerous if it's left untreated."

"I'll be fine. You can't tell anyone, Hermione, please."

"You know they might not throw you out."

"Yeah, right," he scoffed. "Why would they let me stay?"

"You've got magic. If you told them you're here, they might offer you a place. Or maybe you could go to another school. You could get help for your epilepsy, if that's what it is. Dumbledore would help you. You're the Boy Who Lived; they wouldn't just throw you back to the streets."

Harry wasn't sure he believed that, and he didn't want the attention of being the Boy Who Lived. "I don't know. I don't really trust anyone. It's safer if I just stay hidden. It's easier."

"Are you scared they'd send you back to your uncle?"

"I'd just run away again."

"They wouldn't," she assured him, "not after you told them what he did."

Harry shrugged. "Maybe one day," he said, just to appease her. She opened her mouth to try and convince him again and he looked at her pleadingly. "Please, Hermione. I'll think about it, okay? But I can't do it right now. I'm not ready yet."

She sighed, looking at him sadly, but nodded. "Alright. But just so you know, when you do want to tell someone I'll come with you. You don't have to do it alone."

He was honestly touched by that and gave her a warm, heartfelt smile.

* * *

In March Harry happened across Hermione and Neville outside the library. He was invisible as usual and there were too many students around for him to appear even if Hermione had been alone—he hadn't told Neville about himself yet, although Hermione suggested it a few times—and he was there just in time to see Draco Malfoy and his two cronies come up to them.

"Oh good," Malfoy drawled with a nasty smile, twirling his wand between his fingers, "I was looking for someone I could use this new curse on that I just learnt." He pointed his wand at Neville. " _Locomotor Mortis!_ "

Instantly Neville's legs sprang together. His arms flailed as he lost his balance and he knocked into Hermione, both of them falling to the floor while the three Slytherins laughed. Hermione pushed Neville off her, ignoring his apologies as she dug out her wand to cast the counter-curse for him.

"I don't know how you ended up in Gryffindor, Longbottom," Malfoy sniggered. "You must have bribed the hat; I've seen rats braver than you."

"How'd you get into Slytherin, Malfoy?" Harry whispered from behind him, making the blond boy jump. "Because I've seen pigs more cunning than you."

Malfoy whirled, eyes scanning the corridor for the source of the voice. "Who's there? Show yourself!"

Only Hermione didn't look confused by his words. She finally got Neville free and the two of them got to their feet while Malfoy was still looking for Harry. Harry made a Wish and Crabbe and Goyle suddenly tripped over even though they'd been standing still, hitting the floor with heavy thuds. Malfoy whirled again, glaring at Hermione and Neville and raising his wand, but before he could do anything, Harry hit him with a Leg-Locker Curse just as he'd done to Neville, and the Slytherin toppled over with his friends. Harry crouched down by his head.

"There's nothing cunning or ambitious about being a bully, Malfoy."

"Granger, Longbottom, detention!"

Harry jumped up, moving quickly out the way as Snape stalked down the corridor towards the group, drawing his wand to free Malfoy from the Leg-Locker curse. Harry watched guiltily as Snape took points from Gryffindor when Hermione and Neville insisted they hadn't attacked the three Slytherins. When Snape finally sent them on their way, Harry followed.

"Go ahead, Neville," Hermione said when they were some distance from the library. "I just need a minute. I'll catch up."

When Neville rounded the corner, Hermione turned, eyes scanning the corridor. Harry double checked no one was there before making himself visible.

"You got me a detention!"

"I'm sorry!"

"Snape thinks I'm a bully! I can't believe you! I've never bullied anyone in my life!"

"I was standing up for you two! I didn't mean for that to happen. I'm sorry, I really am."

"Well don't bother next time," she snapped, turning on her heel and stalking away.

"Hermione," he tried, but she didn't stop and he had to quickly hide himself as a Hufflepuff turned into the corridor.

She didn't turn up at their next scheduled hang out time. Harry sat waiting for hours, hoping maybe she was just late, but eventually had to admit that she wasn't coming and he slouched off to his bedroom feeling miserable and guilty.

A week passed, then another, and Hermione showed no sign of forgiving Harry. She wasn't in the library as often and when she was it was always with Neville, giving Harry no chance to talk to her. He seriously considered sneaking into the Gryffindor common room, or joining a Gryffindor class to at least pass a note to her, but one day he found her in the library alone, a book open in front of her but her fingers tapping the table and a second chair pulled out next to her. At first he wondered if it was Neville's, but only Hermione's book bag was on the floor.

When he sat down, she immediately put aside her book and turned to him, talking as soon as he made himself visible.

"I still don't forgive you," she said quickly, cutting him off in mid apology, "but we finally had our detention last night and I had to talk to you. That dog on the third floor is called Fluffy and it's definitely guarding something and that something is to do with Professor Dumbledore and a man named Nicolas Flamel."

"How do you know?"

"We had detention with Hagrid and I accidentally let slip that I knew about the dog. I thought I was going to get another detention but he hardly even told me off, and he obviously knew what was down there—he was all edgy and nervous—so I tried asking about it and he let slip that name. He shut up after that, but this is something."

Harry nodded in agreement. "I'll say—Nicolas Flamel's the only known maker of the Philosopher's Stone."

Flamel was a prominent figure in wizarding history; it was impossible for Harry to not know who he was.

"Do you think that's what Fluffy's guarding?" Hermione asked.

"I… well, it's possible I guess. It's certainly the sort of thing that someone would want to steal, and something that would need protecting, but what would it be doing in a school?"

"Hagrid said that whatever was under the trapdoor was between Flamel _and_ Professor Dumbledore. If they're friends, Flamel might have asked Professor Dumbledore to look after the Stone for him. Hogwarts is one of the safest places in the country."

"Didn't you say that Snape tried to get past Fluffy back on Hallowe'en? Do you think he's trying to steal it?"

"He can't be. He's a teacher, he wouldn't do that."

"He's not exactly a nice teacher. He's horrible to everyone."

"He's just strict," Hermione countered.

"McGonagall's strict. Snape's mean. He's made Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott cry in Potions more than once. What kind of teacher does that?"

"He's a bit unpleasant," she admitted, and he snorted. "But I'm sure he isn't trying to steal the Stone."

Harry just shrugged.

* * *

Several weeks later, just after the Easter holiday, Harry surprised Hermione by saying, "I want to tell Neville about me."

Hermione looked up from her Charms notes in surprise. They were studying more lately; end of year exams were two months away but Hermione already wanted to start going over everything she learnt in the past year.

"You do?"

"You trust him, don't you?"

"Of course. I just didn't think you did."

He shrugged. "He's your friend. Bring him to our next session?"

"Are you going to tell him you're Harry Potter, or just that you're here?"

"Probably just that I'm here. I don't know; I'll see how it goes."

They met a few days later and it went well enough that Harry decided to reveal exactly who he was. Neville was torn between nervous fear at such blatant rule-breaking, and a jittery feeling of joy at being trusted with this big secret, determined not to disappoint Hermione and Harry by telling anyone. He also felt some smug satisfaction whenever he looked at Ron, Seamus, and Dean, knowing he was been trusted with this big secret and they weren't.

The weeks went on. In mid-May, Hagrid's house nearly burnt down and Harry wasn't sure whether to believe the rumours that he'd been trying to raise a dragon.

The second-to-last Quidditch match of the season was the following Saturday, between Slytherin and Hufflepuff. Slytherin flattened Hufflepuff and they were clear winners for the Quidditch cup; the final match between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw would only determine who came second, third, and fourth.

Harry didn't care about the cup, but he enjoyed spending some time in the sun, watching people fly and relaxing for a while, even if it did make him jealous that he couldn't join in.

After, he hummed cheerfully as he returned to his bedroom, but his good mood evaporated instantly when he opened the door and found a man waiting for him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

The man was blond haired, blue-eyed, and maybe thirty years old, dressed in Muggle jeans and a t-shirt beneath a cloak of dark green with lighter green runes embroidered into it. He lounged in Harry's armchair, absently twirling his hand and fingers and making several different coloured balls of light dance around above his head. They vanished when Harry came in and the man turned towards him.

"Hello, Harry."

Harry said nothing. He remained invisible, but didn't flee the room despite the sudden rush of adrenaline. How did this man know who he was? Could he see him? Harry had never even seen any of the teachers cast the kind of wandless magic that this man displayed.

"You can show yourself," the man said. "I'm not going to hurt you, or reveal you to anyone else. Besides it's terribly rude to have a conversation with someone when you're invisible."

Harry hesitated a moment, then revealed himself. He didn't move further into the room and he didn't trust the man, but there was no point hiding.

"Who are you?"

"I'm the Assistant. Nice to meet you."

"What kind of name is that?"

"Hey, don't diss the name. It's cool."

"It's weird."

"You have no appreciation for clever names."

Harry gave him a sceptical look. "Why are you here?"

The man sat up straight. "Tell me what you know about the Philosopher's Stone."

"I'm not telling you. I don't even know who you are or why you're here or how you knew I was here."

"I'm not here to hurt you, Harry. What do you know about the Stone?"

"Why should I tell you anything when you won't tell me?"

"Alright, how about this: a question for a question. I answer yours, you answer mine. Fair?"

"I go first."

The man nodded, leant back in the chair, and gestured for Harry to start.

"How'd you know I was here?"

"It's your first year at Hogwarts; where else would you be? What do you know about the Stone?"

"That's a really vague question."

The Assistant smiled but conceded the point. "Do you know where it is?"

"It might be under the school, but it might not. I'm not a student, you couldn't know I was really here and no one's ever found me before."

"So I took an educated guess. Finding a classroom converted to a private bedroom with locking charms that Dumbledore wouldn't be able to break was a big give away. Do you know who's after the stone?"

"Maybe Snape, but I don't know for sure. Why are you asking me about it?"

"Voldemort wants it. You need to stop him before he gets it." Harry stared at the Assistant, who smiled. "Yeah, something like that."

"But—what—I mean, Voldemort's _dead_."

"Temporarily incapacitated is my preferred phrase, and if he gets his hands on the Stone he'll be permanently fit, able-bodied, and ruthlessly brutal."

"Then you need to do something!"

The Assistant laughed dryly. "No, I don't meddle. Well, I do, but only in terms of telling people things they might otherwise have figured out themselves. Or because I feel like it. Point being, I don't stop him. You do."

"But I'm just a kid, I can't stop Voldemort!"

"You already did once."

Harry scowled and looked away. "That doesn't count. I don't know how I did that. It was a fluke, it wasn't me."

The Assistant shrugged. "You've still done it, and now you're ten years older and wielding some serious firepower. You think you can't take him?"

"He's _Voldemort_. You Know Who. He Who Must Not Be Named. He terrorised the wizarding world for eleven years, I've read all about it; his reign was one of the darkest times in wizarding history."

"And if he gets the Stone, that's going to happen all over again." The Assistant leant forward, resting an elbow on his knee as his now very serious eyes settled on Harry. "Look, stop him, get someone else to stop him, or sit back and do nothing, but if Voldemort gets the Stone the world is going to turn very dark, very quickly. Trust me, I know that all too well."

"Who _are_ you?"

The Assistant straightened, smiling again. "Much too early to be telling you that. You've got two weeks to think about what you want to do. He'll go for the Stone on the night of the fourth of June."

"How do you know that?"

"I know a lot of things. Remember, two weeks. I'll see you again sometime." The Assistant got to his feet, straightening his cloak and brushing a strand of blond hair from his forehead. "By the way, next time someone questions you, don't give up so much information so easily. Be stingy."

He tapped two fingers to his head in a salute and headed out the door, turning invisible just as he opened it and walked out, leaving Harry to stare after him, baffled and shocked.

* * *

He didn't immediately tell Hermione and Neville about the Assistant. He didn't want to believe it was true, but he knew he had to at least consider it. He sat in the library one afternoon—classes were all about exam preparation right now, boring for him—and forced himself to think about what it would be like if Voldemort came back to life.

He'd read enough about the war to know it would be bad. Could he let that happen? If the Assistant was right and Harry did nothing, it would be his own fault. Well, the Assistant's too. He was the adult, he should have done something about it, but he made it clear he had no intention of doing so. It wasn't fair of him to dump things on Harry's shoulders like that, but he had, and Harry didn't want to do nothing and be responsible for letting Voldemort come back.

But what to do? Tell someone? Who? Hermione and Neville were the first he thought of, but what could they do? Two children with only a year's worth of magical training had no hope against Voldemort. One of the teachers? It would mean revealing himself. Maybe he could send an anonymous note to the headmaster. But Dumbledore might ignore it thinking it was a prank or something. Why would he believe someone saying that Voldemort was trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone when he was meant to be dead?

In the end, he decided to go down and check on the stone himself, and send a message to Dumbledore. It was a last minute decision and he sent the missive with one of the school owls on 4th June, just as the last classes of the day were ending. He also mentioned his plans to Hermione and Neville. If Voldemort really was involved, Harry didn't want to face him and die only for no one to ever know about it.

"We're coming with you," Hermione said immediately when he explained everything as they hung out by the lake. None of them wanted to be inside when the weather was so good, and they were far enough around the water's edge that no one else would disturb them.

"No—" Harry began, but she cut him off.

"You can't go down there alone, especially if it really is Voldemort. This Assistant man sounds horribly untrustworthy, but if you're really going to go, we're coming too."

"She's right," Neville agreed, although he looked a bit green at the thought and he winced whenever Hermione or Harry used Voldemort's name. "You can't do it alone. But why don't we just tell a teacher?"

"I told Dumbledore," Harry said. "If you want to tell someone else, leave me out of it."

"I really think we should," Neville said, and Hermione didn't take much convincing. They went immediately to Professor McGonagall and Harry tagged along behind them to watch what happened. He wasn't entirely surprised when McGonagall sent them away with a stern warning about not interfering with things that had nothing to do with them. She also mentioned that Dumbledore had left the school for the evening.

"I definitely have to go down now," Harry said when they found a classroom to talk in. Hermione and Neville nodded reluctantly.

"We're still coming with you. We'll go tonight, after everyone's gone to bed," Hermione said.

"What if that's too late?" Harry objected, but Neville shook his head.

"You Know Who or whoever it is won't want to go down early, will he? He might get seen and caught. He'll go late."

Harry wasn't so sure, but Hermione threatened, "If you go without us, I'll tell Professor McGonagall about you."

"Hermione!"

Her expression was set. "It's too dangerous to go alone."

"I can do magic even the teachers can't," Harry pointed out. "I can look after myself."

"I mean it. I'll tell."

He scowled at her, but agreed to wait and take them with him.

He spent that evening hanging out in Gryffindor, floating near the ceiling to avoid the crowd of students, eavesdropping on gossipers, stealing a chocolate frog from the bunch a seventh year brought down to celebrate the end of her exams, and watching Fred and George Weasley bother Ron. Eventually, after what felt like forever, the students trickled off to bed until only Hermione and Neville remained. Harry floated down from the ceiling and made a Wish to make them invisible too, but as they vanished from his sight he realised that making them invisible to each other might make things tricky. He thought about it, made another Wish, and they came back into view.

"But we need to be invisible," Neville said, "or we'll get caught."

"We should be invisible to everyone else," Harry replied unsurely, "just not to each other."

" 'Should'?" Hermione repeated, picking up on his hesitant tone.

"Well we've got no one to try it on and we shouldn't really waste time talking about it. My magic's never failed me before, it shouldn't do now. Let's go."

They reached the third floor without trouble and came to a stop outside the locked door. Harry told the other two to wait while he dealt with Fluffy and crept through the door. The dog growled, maybe smelling him or just reacting to the door, and Harry Wished for the dog to just curl up and go to sleep. It did exactly that and only when the animal was snoring loudly did Harry back up and pull the door open.

"C'mon," he whispered, beckoning the other two inside. "Let's get down there quick. I don't know how long he'll stay asleep."

When they opened the trap door, they could see only darkness. There was no ladder, rope, or any other way for them to get down. Harry conjured a small globe of light and flew down first to check the distance, then made a rope ladder for Hermione and Neville to use. He waited to one side, beyond the gently writhing plant covering half the floor, and was surprised when Neville stopped six feet from the base of the rope.

"Harry! That's Devil's Snare! We can't land on that!"

"Oh, oops," Harry said guiltily. He hadn't recognised the plant and hadn't considered that it might be dangerous to land on.

"It reacts to fire," Neville added helpfully.

Harry nodded and replaced his globe light with a traditional flame torch, waving it near the Devil's Snare and driving the plant back so Neville and Hermione could complete their descent. Once all three of them were on the floor, they went down a passageway that led them to a chamber full of winged keys.

"We're doomed," Neville moaned, catching sight of the brooms they were obviously supposed to use to catch the right key. "Even you can't fly well enough to catch a key. You'd have to be a Seeker or something."

Harry shot him an amused look. "I can just Wish for the key, but I don't even need that."

He went to the door, Wished, and it swung open.

"You know," Hermione said conversationally as they headed through, "if we weren't currently breaking about fifty school rules and trying to save a powerful magical object from the darkest wizard in history, I might be annoyed at how easily you do everything."

Harry just grinned at her. The next chamber had a giant chess set, but they were able to walk across the board undisturbed.

"That was a bit simple," Neville said worriedly. "Too simple."

"We were probably meant to play," Hermione said. "I'm not sure why we didn't. You'd think there would be something to force us."

"I think it's because when I Wish to hide from people, it's not just hiding from their eyes," Harry suggested. "I Wish to be completely undetectable and that's extended to you as well, so maybe the pieces only react if there's someone there they can detect."

They rushed through the next room. Inside it was a troll, larger and smellier than the one at Hallowe'en, but thankfully already knocked out.

"He's already here," Hermione's muffled voice said as they edged past it with their robes pulled up over their mouths and noses. "You Know Who's already come through."

Harry and Neville said nothing until they stepped into the last room. Fires sprung up in front of both the door behind them and the one ahead and Harry took a moment to look at his friends. They were pale and nervous. Until now, the idea of Voldemort getting the Stone was just a theory, a possibility, but now they knew for sure.

"I was going to say we should go back," Neville said in a shaky voice, "but I guess we can't."

Harry approached the table set up in the middle of the room with seven potion-filled bottles and a piece of parchment on top. He picked up the parchment, reading the riddle and glancing at the bottles, then at the fire. Before he could vanish the fire, however, Hermione snatched the parchment from his hand.

"I'm doing this one. You've done everything else; I don't want to be completely useless."

He tried to tell her she wasn't, but she shushed him and set to it. After a while thinking, she pointed to two of the vials and said surely, "That one takes us forward, that one back."

The one to go forward only had enough for one mouthful, but the other vial had more than enough for two. Harry took a deep breath, inhaling shakily and letting it out slowly.

"I'm going on. You two go back, grab the brooms in the room with the keys, fly out and get McGonagall or… or just anyone."

"She didn't believe us before," Neville pointed out.

"Take the riddle as proof you've been down here and… tell them who I am. I'm pretty sure they won't leave me down here, student or not. People have been looking for me for years after all."

They went first then he drank the second potion and headed onwards. Beyond the fire was a large chamber and sure enough there was already someone in there, stood before the mirror that Harry found at Christmas. But it wasn't Voldemort—it was Quirrell.

Quirrell turned, frowning. Harry Wished himself completely and utterly invisible and silently moved aside. Quirrell's eyes remained on the door, narrowing slightly, clearly looking for whoever opened it. Harry crept forward, rubbing at his scar, which ached. It's been doing so for weeks, but it was worse now, a steady stab of pain that he struggled to ignore. He didn't do anything to attack Quirrell yet, too baffled.

The Assistant had said Voldemort was after the stone, but even if it was someone else, Harry hadn't expected the nervous, stuttering Defence professor with the weird smelling turban. Even Snape would make more sense than Quirrell—Harry could at least imagine him as a servant of Voldemort, but Quirrell? It just didn't fit.

Quirrell eventually turned back to the mirror, walking around it to look at the back and then coming around to the front again.

"I see the Stone," he murmured to himself without stutter or hesitation. "I see myself presenting it to my master, but how do I get it…"

Harry peered past Quirrell but all he saw was the man's reflection—normal, not older like Harry saw himself at Christmas, just plain old Quirrell, mouth twisted with angry confusion.

"Perhaps… is the Stone inside the mirror? Do I break it? Or…"

Harry Wished the glass of the mirror unbreakable. If the Stone was inside it, hopefully that would be enough to keep it safe at least for a while. Then he looked at Quirrell. He might not be much, but he was clearly not what he seemed and Harry made a Wish.

Quirrell cried out in shock when ropes appeared from thin air and bound themselves around his body and legs, knocking him off balance to topple to the floor. Harry dropped his invisibility, watching as Quirrell noticed him, his face twisting angrily.

"You!" he snarled, eyes noticing the scar on Harry's forehead.

"Me," Harry confirmed, and then leapt back when Quirrell clicked his fingers and the ropes disappeared.

"You're supposed to be missing," he said, getting to his feet.

"Depending on who you ask, I am. There's help on the way. You're not getting the Stone."

"Help will come too late to save you."

"Let me speak to him," said a third voice, high and cold, making Harry jump. Quirrell hesitated.

"Master, you are not strong enough."

"I have strength enough for this."

When Quirrell unwrapped the turban, Harry could only stare in horror at the face sticking out the back of Quirrell's head. He knew, without doubt, that this was Voldemort.

"Harry Potter… you see what I've become… you see what I must do to survive… live off another, a mere _parasite_ ," the face spat.

"You're still not getting the Stone," Harry said with more confidence than he felt.

" _You_ will."

"I'm not helping you. You killed my parents!"

"Get me the Stone and I will bring them back. I have great power, Harry. Restored, I can return your parents to you. Surely that is worth retrieving the Stone."

"You're a liar," he said, but his voice shook and Voldemort heard it. It wasn't like Harry didn't want the Stone, because he sort of did. With its ability to turn metals to gold he'd never have to steal anything in his life again, but with the elixir of life… maybe, just maybe, the vision of himself as a happy, healthy grown-up could come true.

But he couldn't let Voldemort get it. It didn't matter how desperately he wished he could have his parents back, it wasn't possible, he knew that. Bringing back the dead was magic not even he could do. He'd tried—when he'd found that street girl abusing kittens, one of them had been dead and he'd Wished it alive, but it became only a ratty, slightly scary zombie-cat and he'd cried as he made himself kill it again.

"Get me the Stone, Harry, and I can give you all you've ever wanted."

"No. I'm not getting it."

"KILL HIM!"

Quirrell didn't even bother with magic. He just lunged at Harry, knocking him to the floor, pinning him down and wrapping his hands around Harry's neck. Pain exploded across Harry's head, so intense that he couldn't even think to fight back against Quirrell—but he didn't have to. Quirrell howled with pain and snatched his hands back.

"What magic is this?!" he cried, staring at his red, raw, blistering hands.

"Fool! Kill him!"

Quirrell raised his hand to cast a curse and Harry, head still stabbing, reached up with his own hands and grabbed Quirrell's face. Quirrell screamed and jerked away and Harry followed, his pain-addled mind thinking only that he needed to keep his hands on Quirrell, keep him screaming and in pain so that he couldn't kill Harry. He grabbed Quirrell's arm and Quirrell thrashed, trying to throw him off, free hand grabbing at Harry's fingers only to snatch back.

Stop! Harry thought, and like the troll on Hallowe'en, Quirrell went still, and Harry let go of him, staggering back. He caught a glimpse of someone at the door and then the world spun and went black.

* * *

He woke up in private room in the hospital wing, wrists bound with restraints that didn't fall away when he Wished it. He panicked. He Wished again, but nothing happened. He couldn't conjure, transfigure, or even levitate anything. He thrashed on the bed, pulling at the restraints, and by the time Madam Pomfrey came in he was hyperventilating and had made his wrists bleed beneath the leather.

"Mr Potter! Calm yourself!"

He couldn't. He'd never not been able to do magic, not since he made his deal. It terrified him. Being powerless put him in danger, made him weak, vulnerable.

Pomfrey rushed to his side, tapped her wand to the restraints, and they fell away. Instantly, the door crashed shut and then open again and a swarm of butterflies appeared in the room. They turned to bees, then flower petals, then burst into flames. The walls painted themselves every colour of the rainbow, the multitude of sweets piled on a table to one side levitated up, and the water on the bedside cabinet poured out of the glass, defying every law of gravity to whirl through the air, twist itself into the shape of a fox that trotted in a circle several times before slinking back to the glass and sliding back inside as though simply poured from a jug.

When it was over, Harry scrambled off the bed, backing into a corner and hugging himself and trying to calm his racing heartbeat. Pomfrey gaped.

The door opened again and this time Albus Dumbledore entered. He smiled warmly at Harry, who didn't react. Pomfrey shook herself off.

"It's very good to see you, Mr Evans," Dumbledore greeted. Harry gulped down a breath.

"What did you do to me?" he asked shakily. "Why couldn't I do magic on the bed?"

"The restraints are etched with magic suppression runes. I apologise, I simply didn't want you to flee or hide yourself before I came to meet you."

Harry flicked his gaze between Dumbledore and Pomfrey. "What do you want with me?" he asked, and was glad to hear his voice was steadier.

"Why don't we sit down?" Dumbledore suggested, gesturing to the bed and then, at Harry's wary look, added, "The restraints will stay off. It was a precaution only and I'm sorry to have distressed you so much."

Harry cautiously sat and Madam Pomfrey left them to talk. "You know who I am."

Dumbledore nodded. "Miss Granger and Mr Longbottom told me everything. It was quite the shock to hear you've been living under my roof for the past year. It is just this year, is it not?"

"Yeah. Are Neville and Hermione okay?"

"Perfectly fine."

"What about the Philosopher's Stone? Did Quirrell get it?"

"The Stone has been destroyed."

" _Destroyed?_ You can't do that!"

Dumbledore cocked his head ever so slightly. "Why not?"

"It's the _Philosopher's Stone!_ You can't just destroy something like that! It's a powerful magical artefact—it's a part of history! And what about Nicolas Flamel? That's his life's work all gone!"

Dumbledore smiled. "While most well known for creating the Stone, Nicolas has done much more with his life than just that. As it stands, it was his decision to destroy it anyway. He felt it was too dangerous to allow it to continue to exist."

"But…" He trailed off. He didn't want to say he was disappointed because he'd hoped he might be able to use the Stone himself, that it might save him from the unpleasant death that was coming for him in just six years.

It was no use thinking that now, so he asked, "Is Voldemort dead now then?"

"I'm afraid not," Dumbledore sighed. "He abandoned Professor Quirrell to death and fled."

"To—did I _kill him_?" Harry asked, horrified.

"His death is not your fault."

"But you said Voldemort abandoned him to death. Did Voldemort actually kill him or did he die because of what I did?"

"He died because he let a very dark wizard possess him," Dumbledore said firmly, but Harry was having none of it.

"But was it what I did that actually killed him? The burning?"

Dumbledore hesitated, and that was all the answer Harry needed. He drew back on the bed, shaking.

"I'm a murderer."

"You are _not_ ," Dumbledore insisted. "Harry, you defended yourself against something trying to kill you. That is not murder. There is absolutely nothing wrong with justified self-defence."

Harry still shook slightly, but he acknowledged that. Better Quirrell than him, right? It was just horrifying to know that he'd caused someone's death.

"I didn't mean to do it," he said. "I swear I didn't. I just tried to keep him off me, but his skin kept burning wherever I touched him. Why did that happen?"

"Because of love."

Harry blinked. "What?"

"You see, Harry, the night Voldemort tried to kill you, your mother sacrificed herself to save you."

Harry's breath hitched, his eyes widening.

"That kind of sacrifice, one made in love, is some of the oldest and most powerful magic known to man. Love is the purest protection, stronger than any spell Voldemort could cast. It protected you that night, and continues to protect you to this day."

"Love?" Harry repeated dubiously. "That's not magic."

"On the contrary, it is a very powerful type of magic. It left a mark on you that no eye can see, something deep within your skin. Voldemort does not understand love, he never has, and it leaves him unable to touch someone imbued with something so pure."

That sounded a bit ridiculous to Harry, who had doubts about the existence of love, but if Dumbledore was making it up then he was doing a good job of looking like he believed it.

"Now, I would like to ask you some questions," Dumbledore said, and Harry stiffened. "You needn't worry. I'm curious to learn more about your seemingly unique brand of magic. Miss Granger tells me you call it 'Wish Magic'."

"Yeah," Harry said warily.

"Then your outburst earlier was the result of wishing?"

Harry tugged at his fringe and nodded. Actually, some of it had been out of his control, the crashing door and initial burst of butterflies that he conjured.

"It is very impressive. How long have you been able to do it?"

"Forever," he lied.

"I also understand you're capable of turning invisible…" He trailed off as Harry vanished before his eyes. "Harry, if you'll permit me, I'd like to cast a few spells just to test the extent of your invisibility."

"You can't see me, what more is there to test?"

"I would like to see if you're merely invisible to the naked eye or to magical means of detection as well. It won't hurt."

"Alright."

He sat for fifteen minutes as Dumbledore cast spell after spell. He called in Madam Pomfrey to confirm whether Harry succeeded at making himself invisible to only one person (he did) and also attempted a number of spells to try and make Harry visible, none of which worked.

"Remarkable," he eventually said, retaking his seat as Harry made himself fully visible once more. "For all intents and purposes, as far as magic is concerned, you simply do not exist. I know of no other spell that can so thoroughly hide the existence of a person."

Harry suddenly wondered if it would hide him when the demon deal was due. If he could hide himself that well, could he hide himself from hellhounds?

"I presume," Dumbledore went on, sounding less impressed now and more gently curious, "that you've been hiding like this since leaving your aunt and uncle's house several years ago."

"Yeah."

"Why did you leave Little Whinging? You were safe there."

"I wasn't _safe_ ," Harry replied incredulously, and Dumbledore's gaze flicked to Harry's left eye.

"I realise the burglary must have scared you, however—"

"It wasn't a burglar," Harry interrupted, daring to see what reaction he'd get. "My _uncle_ did this to me. He just blamed it on a burglar so he wouldn't get in trouble."

Dumbledore blinked. "Your uncle? Why would he do that?"

Harry's face twisted. "I knew no one would believe me. That's why I never told."

"I didn't say I don't believe you," Dumbledore said calmly. "I merely asked why he would do such a thing."

"I don't know," Harry snapped. "He never told me why he liked beating me up, did he? He just did it. "

"Putting you in hospital wasn't the first time he hurt you?"

"He's always hurt me," Harry said bitterly. "Little Harry Potter, the freak who lived. "

"You are not a freak," Dumbledore said quietly, but there was anger burning in his eyes.

Harry scoffed. "Yeah, right. He always called me that—him and my aunt—and now I've got magic no one else does, and a messed up eye, and this stupid scar on my forehead. They realised I was a freak before anyone else did."

"You are not a freak," Dumbledore repeated.

Harry folded his arms over his chest. He wasn't going to argue about this. He didn't like thinking of himself as a freak, but sometimes he couldn't help it. It wasn't like he was normal.

He changed the subject. "What happens to me now? Are you going to kick me out?"

"Why on earth would I do that?" Dumbledore asked. Harry shrugged. "Your name has been down for Hogwarts since you were born, and you've just done us—and the whole world—a great service by preventing Quirrell from reaching the Stone. It would be poor repayment for me to kick you out just because of a little trespassing."

"So what then?"

Dumbledore smiled at him. "So, come September, you will begin as a proper student. I couldn't get in, but they showed me where it was. I would ask that you restore it to its proper state before leaving for the summer holiday, however."

"You found my bedroom? Hermione and Neville showed you?"

Dumbledore nodded. "I would ask that you restore it to its proper state before leaving for the summer holiday, however."

"Leaving?" Harry repeated, tensing. "You just said I can be a real student."

"You can, and students leave for the summer."

"You're just throwing me out on the street?" Harry demanded. "I don't have anywhere to live, you know. I'm homeless."

"I will take care of that," Dumbledore promised calmly. "You will not have to live on the streets."

"Where then?"

"I will let you know when it's arranged."

Harry looked at him suspiciously, but Dumbledore was no more forthcoming.

"What about money?" Harry asked. "I don't have any for school supplies."

"Not to worry. Your parents left you a significant fortune when they died. I will have someone take you to Diagon Alley in the holidays and they'll bring the key for your vault."

"Someone?" Harry said sharply. "How many people know about me now?"

"Ah," Dumbledore said, and Harry's heart sunk. "Currently, only myself, Madam Pomfrey, and Professor McGonagall know the truth, however there are rumours that you were involved in saving the Philosopher's Stone and are now here. No one has seen you, however; Madam Pomfrey has kept all hopeful visitors out."

A spark of hope flared in Harry's sinking heart. "So, no one knows that I look like? They just think the famous Boy Who Lived is here?"

"That is correct," Dumbledore said. "What of it?"

"My name's not Potter," Harry said firmly, staring Dumbledore in the eye and making sure there was no doubt about this. "It's Evans. That's the name I'm using when I become a student, and I'm hiding my scar, and I don't want anyone to know who I am."

Dumbledore watched him over his half-moon glasses. "You're certain of this?"

"I've read about myself. Everyone thinks I'm amazing."

"You are. Your power is evidence enough of that."

"But I don't want the attention," Harry told him. "I don't want to be a celebrity. I won't use my magic openly, I'll learn to use a wand like everyone else so no one will know. I'm not having everyone know who I am and… and if you tell, then I'll leave."

"You don't mean that."

"I do," Harry said firmly. "I want to be a student so I can learn about normal magic and have friends and be like a normal kid, but I don't need to go to lessons. I'd rather go back to the streets than have everyone know about me."

For a long moment, they just looked at each other, Dumbledore testing him and Harry sitting firm. He meant what he said.

Eventually Dumbledore sighed and nodded. "Very well, but I have a condition as well: you will join as a first year student, not a second year as your age places you."

"Why?"

"As you say, you wish to be an unremarkable student like any other; transfers to Hogwarts are entirely too rare for it to go unnoted. You also have no experience with wand magic; you may find it considerably different to handle and, as such, should start learning from the basics."

Harry couldn't really argue with that. "Fine. Is that everything then?"

"Just one more thing," Dumbledore said. "Miss Granger and Mr Longbottom mentioned someone who called himself 'the Assistant'. Can you tell me more about him?"

Harry didn't see why not, but he didn't have much to tell. After, Dumbledore said he could spend the last few weeks of term living in the castle as he had been, but to present himself and his belongings at Dumbledore's office on the final day of term after the students had left to catch the train.

Madam Pomfrey was reluctant to let Harry leave, but she declared him fit and healthy and Harry headed outside. Noise from the Quidditch Pitch drew him over and he arrived just in time to watch Ravenclaw's Seeker catch the Snitch from right above the Gryffindor Seeker's head, winning the game 290-40 and granting them second place in the Quidditch Cup. He didn't see Hermione and Neville there, but neither of them were big Quidditch fans, much to his disappointment, so it wasn't a surprise. It was almost lunch by then so he headed for the Great Hall and floated about the ceiling until they turned up, then followed them out after they'd eaten.

"Do you think Madam Pomfrey will let us see Harry yet?" Neville asked quietly. There were other students in the halls, but no one close enough to hear him.

"I don't know, but we can try," Hermione replied.

"You won't have much luck," Harry said behind them, and they both jumped and shrieked. The other students looked around, but just rolled their eyes and muttered about immature first years.

"Harry!" Hermione ground out between her teeth. "Don't do that."

Harry sniggered. "Sorry. Let's go to my rooms."

They did so, settling down in the sitting room, and Hermione was quick to inform him, "There are all sorts of rumours about what happened with Professor Quirrell. And they all know about you—not that you've been hiding here or your Wish Magic or anything, but they all just know you were involved."

"We didn't tell them," Neville added. "They just sort of… knew. Or guessed, maybe. I don't know. What _did_ happen anyway?"

He told them. When he mentioned that he'd be joining as a proper student in September, Hermione beamed at him and Neville gave him a congratulatory clap on the shoulder.

"Shame you won't be in our year; we could have shared a dorm."

"If I get in Gryffindor."

"You think you won't, after what you just did? I'm pretty sure taking on You Know Who is the definition of bravery."

"Maybe," Harry conceded, "but I'm a history nerd and spend most of my time studying so I could easily end up in Ravenclaw."

"Well wherever you end up, we'll still be friends," Neville said, but uncertainly, like he expected Harry to declare otherwise now that he had the entire school to pick his friends from.

"Definitely," Harry agreed, grinning, and Neville and Hermione relaxed and grinned back.

* * *

Three weeks later, grinning was the last thing Harry wanted to do. He stood in Dumbledore's office, a pair of black leather cuffs around his wrists, completely unable to do magic.

"Take them off!"

"No."

" _Take them off!_ " Harry screamed, panic bubbling inside of him. He grabbed Dumbledore's robes, shaking and hitting him. "Take them off, take them off, take them off!"

Saying nothing, Dumbledore calmly extracted himself from Harry's grip, holding him at arm's length with a strength unexpected of his age.

"You have to take them off," Harry begged, anger giving way to desperation as the panic started to overwhelm him. "You can't do this to me. I need my magic, give it back, please, give it back, take them off, _please_."

"I'm sorry, Harry," Dumbledore said earnestly but firmly. "This is for your own good; you wield far too much power for one so young. They will not completely restrain your magic, just restrict it. You will still be able to cast with a wand, when you get one. When you're older and more experienced, I will remove them."

Harry couldn't answer. His breath came short and fast and it felt like something was squeezing his chest. When Dumbledore took his shoulders and started guiding him to a chair, he wanted to lash out but he felt too weak and dizzy to do it. He hasn't felt this afraid since he was seven. If he wasn't so consumed with panic he might have laughed at the fact that not being able to do magic terrified him more than facing a seemingly unkillable dark wizard. He barely noticed when Dumbledore left the office briefly, and then reappeared with a potion that he forced between Harry's lips. He had to cast a spell to get Harry to swallow it.

In just a few minutes, the panic faded, the tightness in his chest eased, and he could breathe properly again. He lifted his gaze to meet Dumbledore's.

"What was that?"

"A Calming Draught."

"I will never forgive you for this," Harry promised.

Dumbledore said nothing.

"I mean it. _Never._ You said I wouldn't have to reveal who I was when I became a student."

"Someone will come to fetch you to visit Diagon Alley in the summer to purchase your school supplies. They'll teach you a Concealing Charm then."

"I'm still not forgiving you."

Dumbledore gave him an infuriating look of understanding, but all he said was, "It's time we left."

Powerless, Harry had no choice but to go.

They left directly from Dumbledore's office, using a Portkey which Harry instantly decided he hated, and reappeared on a street in Thetford. It reminded Harry uncomfortably of Privet Drive, all identical houses with neat lawns and flashy but practical cars that occasionally gleamed when the sun broke through the clouds. Dumbledore led him to number twelve and knocked, and just when Harry didn't think he could hate the man any more, Petunia opened the door.

"Get inside," she snapped, glaring at them both. "I'll not have you hanging around on my doorstep where the neighbours will see you."

"Thank you," Dumbledore said with a broad smile and stepped over the threshold. Harry didn't move.

"You're not leaving me here."

"Harry—"

"After what I told you, you're bringing me back to _them?_ "

"Come inside."

Harry shook his head and backed up. "No. I'm not living with them."

He turned to run and an invisible hand grabbed the back of his shirt and dragged him inside. Petunia glanced fearfully up and down the street before slamming the door shut.

"You can't leave me here!" Harry shouted at Dumbledore. "He nearly killed me!"

"Shall we move through to the sitting room?" Dumbledore suggested, turning and walking through the nearest door before either Harry or Petunia could say anything. Harry reached for the door handle but it was locked, although there was no key in sight. A furious scowl on his face, he slouched after Petunia and Dumbledore into the sitting room.

Apparently Dumbledore came by before to talk to Petunia and Vernon. He made it very clear that if either of them laid a hand on Harry then they would have to answer to Dumbledore. Harry didn't put much stock in his words; Vernon wouldn't be cowed by and old wizard.

"You have to stay here," Dumbledore told him just before leaving. "There are protective charms on this house that I can only put on your family's home. It will protect you from any attempts by Voldemort or his followers to harm you. They will work for a two mile radius; I've put up charms to ensure you can go no further than that from the house, for your own protection."

He had the nerve to smile as he said it.

When Dumbledore was gone, Petunia showed Harry to the smallest bedroom in the house—even smaller than the one he had at Privet Drive—and told him that Dudley still had another week at Smeltings, his boarding school, and Vernon was at work. She was clearly no happier than Harry about their living situation.

"Dinner is at six," she told him shortly. "If you're not at the table when it's served, you won't get any."

"You mean I actually get some?" he asked snidely. Petunia just scowled and muttered something about Dumbledore, then snappishly told him that other than mealtimes, she didn't want to see him. She wouldn't even give him chores to do, she was that eager for him to be out of her sight.

Vernon glanced at him with mingled fear and hatred when he returned from work, but said nothing, apparently deciding to pretend Harry didn't exist. Harry was perfectly happy with that arrangement. The less he and his uncle interacted, the better.

Over the next week, he tried repeatedly to cut the cuffs off, but nothing—knives, razors, even the garden shears—would so much as scratch the leather.

Dudley returned on the last Saturday of June. Vernon went to pick him up from Smeltings, but apparently didn't mention Harry's presence to him because some five minutes after Dudley arrived home the sound of his whining voice rang up the stairs to Harry's bedroom.

"BUT I DON'T WANT HIM HERE!"

It pained Harry that the first words he heard out of his cousin were ones he fully agreed with.

"It's _his_ fault we had to move to this stupid place. Why is he here? Send him away again!"

Harry hadn't asked why the Dursleys moved from Little Whinging. He was curious, but not enough to speak to his aunt or uncle. He wasn't really surprised to hear Dudley laying the blame on him though.

Petunia promised Dudley a new computer to appease him about Harry's existence. It stopped Dudley from shouting; it didn't stop him from barging into Harry's room to tell him how much Dudley hated him and wished he'd run away again, and if he showed his face when Dudley's friends came around then Dudley would beat him up.

Instead of saying anything, Harry stared at Dudley. Petunia told him that he wasn't to mention Dumbledore, Hogwarts, or magic to Dudley, who was told that Harry was found living on the streets and come September would be attending a school for the criminally insane. Harry didn't like being portrayed as some crazy person who needed to be locked up, but that didn't mean he was above using it to his own advantage.

For half a minute he just stared at Dudley, unblinking, expression blank. His dull left eye only made the effect better, and when Dudley started to fidget uncomfortably, Harry lurched forward, yelling nonsense. Dudley shrieked and almost tripped over his own feet as he backed out the room. Harry sniggered, laying back down, but his amusement didn't last long and didn't make up for being stuck in a place he desperately didn't want to be.


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

Harry spent much of July outside. Just like when he was younger, Dudley and his friend—a boy called Louis—decided to get their kicks by picking on him. Despite just the two of them, Louis was tougher and more vicious than any of Dudley's old gang.

They had no qualms about flushing Harry's head down the toilet or twisting his arm behind his back until it almost broke. Petunia and Vernon did nothing about it except to tell Harry to shut up when he yelled; apparently they'd only taken Dumbledore's warning to mean _they_ couldn't hit Harry.

But Vernon, as Harry knew he would, eventually lost his own temper.

A week before Harry's birthday, an owl came swooping through the kitchen window during breakfast, making Petunia scream, Vernon drop a mug, and Dudley fall out of his chair. It circled around, landed on the table, and held out a leg to Harry, who untied the attached letter. It was his Hogwarts letter, accompanied by a note that Professor McGonagall would be arriving at the house on the last day of the month to take him shopping.

None of the Dursleys moved until Harry went to the bits'n'pieces drawer to fetch a pen and scribble a short reply that he sent back with the owl. Only then did Vernon jump out of his chair, slam the window shut, and turn on Harry, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him vigorously.

"I'll not have your freakishness in my house!" he spat.

"Get off me!" Harry yelled back. "Dumbledore'll turn you into a slug!"

He might hate Dumbledore with a burning passion, but he wasn't above using the man for his own ends.

It was the wrong thing to say. Vernon backhanded him across the face, knocking him back to hit the edge of the table.

"Vernon!" Petunia cried.

Harry lifted his gaze to Vernon's face, forcing his fear back behind anger. He hated that: being scared and facing Vernon again, powerless. It was like being seven years old all over again.

"Dumbledore'll turn you into a slug and then I'll pour salt on you."

"OUT!"

He left the house and didn't come back until after dark, even though it meant missing dinner. He couldn't wait to get out of Thetford for good.

* * *

A week later, he was woken by the tapping of an owl at his bedroom window. He quickly let it in and untied the package attached to its leg, pulling off the letter taped on top as the owl flew off again.

 _Dear Harry,_

 _Happy birthday! Dumbledore gave me your address so I could write and I think he gave it to Hermione too. How are you? How are the people you're living with? Are they nice? Dumbledore says they're Muggles but know about magic, so I hope the owl doesn't scare them. What's it like living with Muggles anyway?_

 _Hope you're well. Write back soon_

 _From,_

 _Neville_

He tore the package open to find an Ultimate Honeydukes Selection Box, which had enough sweets and chocolate to last him three months. He helped himself to an Ice Mouse, closing his eyes and taking a moment to just revel in the fact that he'd got a birthday present from a friend. A real person that he knew and who liked him.

Vernon seemed to find his cheerfulness offensive that morning, grumbling as he left for work, but Harry didn't care. He didn't even care when Dudley stole his last sausage. He's had a friend who sent him letters and a birthday present, and today he'd go shopping for his school things and finally get a wand and learn how to do a Concealing Charm for his scar.

It did occur to him then that as an underage wizard he wasn't allowed to do magic. It put a slight dampener on his good mood, but he wouldn't be able to find out until Professor McGonagall arrived.

The doorbell rang just as Harry was finishing breakfast and he leapt out of his chair, grabbing his backpack and hurrying out without even a goodbye. His bag contained Kiwi, all his Famous Figurines, and the box of sweets. His Wish to make it bigger on the inside remained even after Dumbledore put the cuffs on him, and he was taking it with him because he never left his belongings anywhere Dudley could get to them, not since he tried to flush Kiwi down the toilet.

But when he opened the door—

"You're not Professor McGonagall."

Severus Snape looked down his hooked nose at him. "Your observational skills are remarkable. Your manners are less so. It's rude to leave someone standing on the doorstep."

"Where's McGonagall?" he asked, unable to keep all the irritation from his voice. Dumbledore had told someone else about him; how many others were there?

"Professor McGonagall has fallen ill. I will be taking you instead and I would like to get this over and done with as quickly as possible, so if you've quite finished asking pointless questions—"

"'Scuse me," said a voice behind Snape. "Need someone ter sign fer this."

Snape stepped aside to let the postman hand Harry a package with a couple of letters on top. Harry put them on the sideboard while he scribbled a signature on the postman's clipboard.

"Come in," Harry muttered to Snape, picking up the parcel again "I'm just gonna take these to my aunt."

Snape grabbed his shoulder, unbalancing him, and the letters slid to the floor.

"Your aunt?"

"Yeah, Aunt Pet– this is for me!"

His name and address was written in Hermione's neat script on the top of the parcel, which was about the size and shape of a book. He grinned, put it aside, and picked up the dropped letters. "Back in a sec, sir."

He went to the kitchen and tossed the letters on the table, but before he could say he was leaving, Petunia gasped. Her eyes were fixed on the door and Harry turned. Snape stood there, his dark eyes full of such hatred that Harry was surprised the kitchen itself didn't shrink back from him.

"You," Petunia half-gasped. "What are _you_ doing here?"

"You know him?" Harry asked.

"Are you one of the workers at his school for crazy people?"

Snape looked at Dudley, who shrank back. "Excuse me?"

"Go!" Petunia snapped. "Take the boy and get out."

Harry was eager to leave too. He could tell by Snape's expression that there was going to be awkward questions later. The sooner they got out the house, the less Snape could find to ask him about.

Instead of leaving, Snape flicked his wrist and his wand suddenly appeared in hand.

Petunia stiffened. "You can't—"

"I can't what?" Snape interrupted coldly, a dangerous look on his face.

"He doesn't know," Petunia hissed with a nod towards Dudley.

"Then send him out. Our Portkey leaves in three minutes and I will not be impressed if I have to come back again for the boy."

When Petunia had forced out a complaining Dudley, Snape turned to Harry and grabbed his chin in hand. Harry cringed and jerked his head away.

Snape raised an eyebrow. "I was told you wanted the scar concealed."

"Oh," Harry said, pretending his cheeks weren't going red. "Yeah."

He brushed hair away from his forehead and tilted his head back. Snape touched the tip of his wand to the scar, tracing it along the lightning bolt as he murmured a spell. When it was done, he pocketed the wand and drew out a feather then checked his watch. "We have ninety—"

"My parcel!"

"You can get it later," Snape snapped, but Harry ran from the kitchen, pushing past a half-furious, half-scared Petunia and stumbling into the hall just in time to see Dudley grab the parcel from the sideboard.

"That's mine!"

Dudley grabbed it and made for the stairs. Harry sprinted forwards, knocking into him. Dudley staggered and Harry grabbed the parcel, trying to pull it from him.

"Get off! MUM! Harry's bullying me!"

"That's mine!" Harry yelled at him. "Give it back!"

Dudley abruptly let go and staggered back like someone hit him despite no one touching him. Harry clutched the parcel to his chest, glaring at the other boy, who looking confused. Snape stood over Harry and Petunia rushed to Dudley.

"Don't you use that—that—on my son!" she said furiously to Snape, but her eyes were on Harry. "You, give him the parcel."

"The parcel is his," Snape said before Harry could speak, and Harry turned it so the name on the front was visible. Petunia looked furious. Snape held out the feather to Harry, who grabbed it, and Petunia barely had time to step in front of Dudley before the two wizards vanished.

They reappeared in the Leaky Cauldron. Snape pocketed the feather and slipped his wand up his sleeve, while Harry shrugged off his backpack to put the parcel from Hermione inside.

"Why do you appear to have brought the entirety of your personal possessions with you?" Snape asked.

"It's not safe leaving them with—" He broke off. Snape didn't need to know about his cousin's bullying.

Snape didn't push the issue, but he did ask, "Why did your oaf of a cousin ask if I worked at a school for 'crazy people'?"

Harry shrugged his backpack on again and they headed out into the alley. "My aunt and uncle don't want him to know about magic," he explained reluctantly. "They told Dudley I'm going to a school for the criminally insane."

Snape said nothing to that.

They went to Gringotts first. Harry whooped when they first set off in the cart, but Snape gave him such a dark look that he fell quiet. When they reached his vault and the goblin opened it, Harry staggered at the sight of the piles of gold inside.

"This is all mine?"

Snape looked as disgusted as Harry was awed.

Once back in the Alley, Harry wanted to get his wand first. Snape had other ideas.

"I want to get this over and done with as quickly and as efficiently as possible. We go only to the stores necessary, buy only what you need, and we are not backtracking to anywhere, so I strongly advise you make sure you've got what you need in each store before leaving. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Then we will start with your robes."

When Harry started browsing the other robes available in Madam Malkins, after getting fitted for his school ones, Snape pointedly reminded him that he was only to buy what he needed.

"I _do_ need robes," Harry replied. "I've got hardly any clothes and no robes at all. I can't wear my school uniform all the time."

A muscle twitched in Snape's jaw, but he sat in a chair by the door and folded his arms over his chest, resigning himself to a longer wait.

After Madam Malkins they got his stationary supplies and then a trunk ( _Charmed Against Fire, Thieves, and Spell Damage! Includes Thirty Year Wear-and-Tear Guarantee or Your Money Back! (Terms and Conditions Apply)_ ) and then they finally went to Ollivander's. Harry was practically bouncing with excitement as he waited for a young girl with her parents to get served, watched jealously by a little brother. When the family left, Harry approached the counter with a grin. Ollivander returned the smile then nodded a greeting to Snape.

"We'll start with ebony," Ollivander said to Harry, "like your father's. Ten inches, unicorn hair core."

Harry took the wand, frowning. "How do you know who my father is?"

Ollivander's eyes flicked to Snape. Harry turned, looked at him, then spun back. "He's not my dad!"

Ollivander looked back at him. "I do apologise. Nevertheless, give it a wave."

Harry did. Nothing happened and Ollivander snatched it away and gave him another. "Yew, twelve inches, dragon heartstring."

That one did nothing either. He tried the next, and the next, until it felt like he'd been through nearly the entire shop. He was beginning to wonder if his Wish Magic meant he couldn't use wand magic, then Ollivander handed him a holly wand with a phoenix feather core.

He knew it was the one for him instantly. A warm tingle spread through his fingers and when he swished it through the air, a stream of multicoloured sparks flew from the end.

"Excellent," Ollivander murmured. "If I may, what's your name, young man?"

"Harry Evans," he told him, grinning and twirling the wand between his fingers. "Can I get a holster?"

"Of course," Ollivander replied, thoughtful eyes fixed on Snape. "Arm, hip, or leg?"

The arm one was kind of cool, the way a quick wrist movement would make it pop out and into the hand, but Harry went for a hip one. Snape said the arm one took a bit of practice, and Harry was worried he would accidentally make his wand pop out when he didn't mean to. The leg one struck him as fairly useless, but Ollivander said it was for people who used their arms a lot, such as gardeners, but needed their wand carefully out the way of their pockets.

Harry avoided looking at Snape when they left the store. When Ollivander assumed Snape was his father, Harry was too interested in getting a wand to feel more than suprise, but now he felt awkward. Snape was going to be his _teacher_ ; being mistaken for his son was embarrassing.

And what did Snape think of it? Probably disgust. Harry thought he was the kind of man who was horrified by the idea of having kids of his own, despite being a teacher. It wasn't as if he seemed to like _any_ of the students. It made Harry wonder why he became a teacher in the first place, but he wasn't about to ask.

They went to Flourish and Blotts next, and Harry forgot Ollivander's words as he disregarded Snape's only-what-you-need command and bought not only his set textbooks, but half a dozen other interesting looking books. When he reached for a book on one of the higher shelves, his long shirt sleeve happened to fall back, revealing the bruises on his wrists from when Dudley had held him down three days ago while Louis sat on his hips and force fed him worms. He didn't notice until Snape grabbed his arm and pushed his sleeve up further.

"Where did those come from?"

Harry glanced at them then at Snape. "My cousin. Just messing around."

He didn't need to admit to Snape that he was his cousin's punching bag. It was bad enough Snape saw their fight earlier and knew Harry kept everything he owned in his backpack because of Dudley.

"Just messing around should not leave you battered and bruised."

Harry jerked his arm away. "It's nothing," he muttered, taking the pile of books to the counter.

In the Apothecary, Snape went into the back of the store where the restricted items were while a clerk made Harry a supply kit with the basic ingredients for a new student. Harry was about to pay when Snape came back and stopped him, checking through the kit. He declared it in need of several more ingredients the clerk didn't include, deemed a few of them unfit for use and insulted the clerk while asking him to fetch better ones, and only when he was satisfied did he allow Harry to pay. He got similarly pedantic when they went to the cauldron shop, inspecting the pewter ones and, when Harry asked why they didn't just take the nearest, pointing out that a damaged cauldron could affect the potions made in it.

Harry's letter mentioned pets, but while Harry liked cats and found some of the owls beautiful, he decided not to buy one. At Hogwarts, he would have no one to send letters to, and he had every intention of finding a way out of his cuffs before next summer. He wouldn't go back to the Dursleys for another holiday and having a pet to look after, wherever he did go, would be a hassle.

"Are you going to teach me the Concealing Charm now?" he asked Snape as they headed towards the Leaky Cauldron. "Dumbledore said I could learn it."

"We'll take lunch first," Snape told him.

Snape paid for their lunch. Harry pointed out that he didn't need Snape to, but the man gave him a withering glare and he hurriedly changed his words to a thank you instead.

When they finished eating, Snape told him that he couldn't learn the Concealing Charm there so they were going to Snape's house to do it. Harry, who hoped the incident in Flourish and Blotts would be the last awkward moment he'd have to endure that day, decided this was definitely by far the worst. Going to a teacher's _house_? It just wasn't done. Even he knew that.

But he needed to learn the Concealing Charm, so he pushed the awkwardness aside, gripped the Portkey, made sure he had a tight grip on his trunk, and felt a wrench in his gut as the Portkey activated.

It delivered them into a small dark sitting room full of books. Even the windows and doors, save for the one leading outside, were hidden behind bookshelves. The only space left free was the small fireplace, which wasn't even big enough to floo in, though it was big enough for a floo call apparently, as the moment they appeared Snape led Harry into a tiny kitchen and said, "I need to make a floo call. Sit down. Don't touch anything."

Snape returned to the sitting room and shut the door behind him. Harry sat at the two-person table pushed against the wall opposite the counters and opened up his backpack to pull out the parcel from Hermione. Inside was a book on the sixteenth century European vampire uprising and a letter five times as long as the one Neville sent, filled with details of her holidays and the time she was spending on studying despite not even being at school, and mentioning that she sent the parcel by Muggle post because she wasn't sure if his guardians were accepting of owl post even if they did know about it. He smiled as he read, feeling a bubble of joy in his chest. After a month of the Dursleys, this reminder that he had friends meant the world to him.

Snape was gone for nearly twenty minutes but Harry barely noticed, reading his book. The vampire uprising was a controversial issue, particularly how it began. Wizards were unsure and none of the vampires involved were willing to talk, so there were theories abound on how it all started.

When Snape was done, he opened the door and curtly called, "In here."

Harry put his book aside and eagerly went to the sitting room, drawing his wand from the hip holster then looking expectantly at Snape.

"The Concealing Charm is a second year spell," Snape began. "I've been told you've studied first year magical theory and if you've done so sufficiently I expect you to have no trouble with it. The motions involved are relatively simple and dependant on the area of skin being concealed. For example, your scar would require only a zigzag motion. Were you casting it over the entire face, as is the norm, a circular motion would be required."

"Why would you do it on the entire face? You'd look weird wandering around with your face all concealed."

"You are thinking of a Concealment Spell."

"There's a difference?"

Snape gave him a withering look. "A Concealment Spell is for obscuring objects. A Concealing Charm is a cosmetic spell."

"Wait, so I'm basically wearing _make-up_?"

Snape raised an eyebrow and Harry pushed back his complaints about being a boy wearing make-up. "What's the incantation?"

It took just under an hour for him to master it, which annoyed him. He was used to being able to do any magic instantly; it felt slow to have to practice and perfect everything, but he realised he had to get used to it. Until he could get the cuffs off, everything was going to be slowly learnt.

"I suppose I have to go back now," Harry said once he had the charm perfected. "Are we taking another Portkey?"

"Mr Evans, sit down."

Harry gave him a curious look but settled on a threadbare sofa while Snape sat himself in the old armchair.

"I spoke to the headmaster earlier. He has agreed that, if you wish to, you may remain with me for the rest of the holidays."

Harry had to stop himself from blurting out an instant yes. He _did_ want to get away from the Dursleys, even if it meant living with a teacher for a month, but on the tail of his joy and gratitude was suspicion. Why would Snape offer to take him in? Why would Dumbledore agree to it? He went to all the effort of tricking Harry into going back to the Dursleys and putting up spells to keep him there, now he was just going to let Harry leave them?

"I'm very grateful for the offer, but why would you do that?"

"I have concerns about your health that will be more easily investigated away from your… family."

"I told you those bruises—"

"Do not lie to me again. I am not an idiot and lying will only embarrass you."

Harry scowled and didn't look at him.

"However, those were not my only concern. Since picking you up," he continued when Harry looked up questioningly, "you have, for lack of a better term, 'zoned out' twice and been completely unaware of doing so, whilst also suffering facial tics. Your expression right now tells me this isn't news to you."

"I was going to mention it when school started," he mumbled.

"Mention what? And don't mumble."

"I might be epileptic."

"You 'might'?"

"The seizures started after I ran away so I couldn't ever see a doctor or anything. Hermione thought it was probably because of my—because of when I was attacked as a kid."

"I wasn't aware Miss Granger had a degree in healing," Snape said dryly. "Of course a twelve year old girl is far better equipped to manage a serious medical condition than a licensed healer."

"I was _hiding_ ; I couldn't tell anyone and she figured it out just like you did. Besides, it was fine. I managed. Anyway, like I said, I was going to mention it when I got back to Hogwarts."

Snape looked doubtful. "The medics at Saint Mungo's are better suited to treat you. I will arrange appointments. In the meantime, you will stay here until the new school year begins."

* * *

They went back to the Dursleys so Harry could pick up the few clothes he had there and Snape could tell Petunia that Harry wouldn't be living there anymore. Harry went up to his room alone to fetch his stuff, and when he returned downstairs he paused outside the kitchen, hearing voices from inside.

"… Lily would much prefer you looking after her brat."

He never heard Petunia talk about her sister before, except to complain about her having the nerve to die and leave Harry to Petunia's care. He couldn't hear Snape's reply, just a murmur, and he only heard half of what his aunt said next.

"… both got … deserved…"

But he clearly heard her stifled, terrified shriek. Dudley obviously heard it too, because he came thundering out of the sitting room, pushed past Harry and opened the kitchen door.

"Mum, are you okay?"

Petunia was backed up against the counters and Snape stood in the middle of the kitchen. His wand was tucked up against his arm, the black wood blending in with his black robe, and Dudley didn't notice it, but Harry did.

"Have you got everything?" Snape asked Harry, slipping the wand back up his sleeve and acting like nothing happened.

"Yeah."

Snape looked around at Petunia once more, glanced at Dudley, who looked nervously between Snape and his mother, and then stalked out the room, Harry following.

When they returned to Snape's house, they had to clear out one of the bedrooms for Harry to use. There were only two and the smaller was filled with only a desk and a lot of books. Snape had to be a bigger bookworm than Harry.

"We'll spend the rest of the afternoon clearing this room. One of the Hogwarts elves will be coming by at eight with a bed."

Harry nodded. "I really appreciate you doing this, professor."

Snape's only acknowledgement was a brief glance. "Start by removing the books on the lower shelves. Keep them in order. I'll be back in a moment."

Harry knelt in front of a bookcase as Snape left. He came back a few minutes later with an old and battered looking trunk that he sat in the middle of the room and cast an undetectable expansion charm on it before he started pulling down books as well.

It took the rest of the afternoon. They hardly spoke as they worked, but at dinner that evening—slightly over-cooked stew—Harry worked up the courage to ask Snape, "Did you know my mother?"

"We were in the same year at Hogwarts."

"Were you friends?"

Snape didn't answer immediately. His eyes were fixed on his meal and Harry watched him. He knew so little about either of his parents that he was eager for any scrap of information.

"As much as a Slytherin and Gryffindor can be," Snape answered eventually.

"She was in Gryffindor? What about my dad? Did you know him?"

"Finish eating. Afterwards you can wash up. I expect you to keep your room clean and help around the house as necessary while you're here."

Harry nodded. The rest of the meal passed in silence.

Later, after the house elf delivered the bed, Harry shut himself in the room and looked through _The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1)_ until he found a Cutting Curse. He didn't really expect it to work, but he was going to try anyway. He had to take any chance he could at getting the cuffs off.

Unlike the Concealing Charm, the spell worked on his first try—just not on his cuffs. He rushed to the cramped little bathroom and bunched up a bundle of tissue to press to his bleeding arm, thinking maybe he should have tested it on a bit of parchment or something before he tried using it on anything so close to his skin, especially when the tissue was bright red and falling apart in mere seconds. He panicked, reached for the towel, then stopped, thinking Snape wouldn't be impressed if he got blood all over his towels, even if it was navy and it wouldn't really be that obvious.

But the blood really was gushing out scarily fast and maybe he should just call Snape anyway. He'd call Harry an idiot and probably take away his wand or something, but hopefully he'd do it after fixing his arm.

* * *

"Professor!"

Severus ignored the first call. If Harry wanted to talk to him, he could damn well walk down the stairs to do it. He wasn't going to be summoned like some pet dog.

"Professor?"

Severus frowned. That sounded almost as if Harry was struggling not to cry.

"Sir, please…"

Severus got up then, because that wasn't a tearful tone, but one of pure, unbridled panic.

The bedroom was empty but the bathroom door was ajar. He pushed it open and his heart dropped. Harry was sprawled against the side of the bath tub, barely conscious, his left arm covered in blood which dripped over the floor and soaked the towel gripped loosely in Harry's right hand.

* * *

Harry woke up in a hospital room. Snape was in a chair by the bed but he got up when he noticed Harry awake. He didn't say anything, just walked out the room and came back soon after with a man wearing lime-green robes, who smiled at Harry and came to stand by the bed.

"How are you feeling?" he asked as Harry sat up

"Alright."

"Gave us quite the scare, you know. You want to tell us what happened?"

"I was practising spells. The Cutting Curse."

"On _yourself_?"

"No! It was an accident. I didn't mean to!"

"Alright," he said placatingly, "that's fine, accidents happen. You're all healed up just fine anyway. The professor there stopped your bleeding and got you here quick, and we gave you a Blood Replenishment potion so you'll be just fine. You'll be free to go in the morning, so for now just get some rest, there's a good lad. And maybe leave practising any more magic until you're at Hogwarts, eh?"

When he was gone, Harry hesitantly looked over at Snape, wondering how much trouble he was in. Snape's face was carefully blank of any emotion, but his arms folded over his chest and one leg crossed over the other.

"Was this a suicide attempt?"

"What? No!"

"The Cutting Curse slices through whatever the wand is aimed it. You are competent enough to know how to hold a wand, so unless you suddenly lost all your senses, you cannot possibly have nearly killed yourself just by practising spells."

"I was trying to get the cuffs off. I thought a Cutting Curse might work but I didn't aim very well. I wasn't trying to kill myself, I swear."

Snape's voice was quietly furious. "You almost killed yourself because you couldn't be bothered to undo a simple buckle?"

"They're _stuck_. Didn't Dumbledore tell you about them?"

"Dumbledore does not concern himself with the ridiculous fashion choices of a stupid child."

"He put them on!" Harry half-yelled. "They're magic suppression and he tricked me into putting them on and now he won't take them off and give me my magic back."

"What are you talking about?"

"If you don't know, I'm not telling."

"You almost gave me a heart attack by bleeding all over my bathroom; you _will_ tell me."

Harry flushed, looking down. He had no rebuttal to that.

When he finished reluctantly telling Snape about his Wish Magic, Snape drew his wand and dragged the chair closer to the bed, grabbing Harry's hand and holding it still as he touched his wand to the cuff. He inspected them both, casting a few spells before eventually straightening up and slipping his wand away again.

"They're Magic Locked."

"I told you that."

"Magic Locked, not magically locked. A Magic Lock ties a spell into the caster, making it so they're the only person who can end it. Unless I'm much mistaken, your cuffs are Magic Locked by the headmaster; he's the only person who's able to remove them."

Harry felt like screaming.

"I hate him," he grumbled instead, flopping back against the pillows. "I hate him and I hope he gets eaten by a manticore."

He spent the rest of the night in the hospital and the next morning Snape arranged for him to see a specialist healer about his epilepsy, and about the possibility of getting a magical eye to replace his useless left one. Harry was delighted to discover that not only were there ways to restore his vision, but there were prosthetic eyes that could let him see through walls, or see things even when he removed it.

He spent most of the next month reading and practising magic under Snape's supervision. Snape didn't have much of a garden but there was a river not far away and when the weather was good he took a book and sat by it to read. He slept a lot too, and wrote to Hermione and Neville, sending it through the Muggle post. When they booked his appointment with the healers, they were told he'd need testimonials from people who'd seen him have seizures so he asked his friends about that.

The night before he was due to see the healer, Snape cleared his throat in the middle of dinner and said, "If you're determined not to be recognised as the Boy Who Lived, you may want to consider the option of a non-permanent iris re-colouration."

Harry looked up in confusion. "You mean… change the colour of my eyes? Why would I do that?"

"Because between your eyes and your chosen surname, anyone who knew your mother would be able to guess your parentage."

"From my _eyes_?"

Snape frowned. "Surely you're aware that your eyes are the same as your mother's."

Harry shook his head. "I've never seen any pictures of her or my dad."

A long pause followed his statement. Harry continued to eat, eyes fixed on the spaghetti bolognese. Snape's own fork didn't move until he spoke again.

"I will speak to Professor McGonagall. She was their Head of House; she may have photos that she can give you."

Harry jerked his head up. "Really? You'd do that?"

Snape scowled. "Did I not just say as much?"

"I'd love that. Thank you, thank, you, than–"

"Shut up and finish your dinner."

The next day, they spent most of the morning in the hospital with a healer called Kirith Karpel. Harry spent a great deal of time answering numerous questions about his medical history, lifestyle, and his personal experience with seizures. He explained the attack when he was younger, and to his annoyance Snape refuted his lie about the burglar.

"Did your uncle often hit you?" Kirith asked.

"So what if he did?" Harry grumbled, not looking at her. What was the point in talking about it now? No one ever did anything about it, and if he had his way he was never going back there again, just as soon as he figured out how to escape the cuffs.

"Blows to the head could cause or affect epilepsy," Kirith told him. "It's important I know these things."

Scowling, Harry admitted, "He would hit the back of my head, or my face sometimes, but the seizures didn't start until after that last time, though."

She asked a few more questions about it that he reluctantly answered, and he was glad when she moved on to other things. Snape provided a sheaf of papers and parchments containing the Potter family medical history, much to Harry's surprise, and Harry gave the information from his friends.

He then had a magielectroencephalogram—an MEEG, complex spells cast on his head and a special quill, which stood upright on a strip of parchment and recorded his brain activity—and between that and the witness accounts, Kirith said it was highly likely that epilepsy was the problem

"You mean you're not sure?" Harry asked.

"There's very a minor chance it could be something else," Kirith explained. "It's unlikely, but it's good to be sure. I want to do an MRI—a test that'll let us get images of your brain—and a prolonged MEEG."

"What does that mean for him?" Snape asked.

"You'd need to spend anywhere from a day to a week under observation."

"School begins in a week."

"I know. There's no possibility to do it before then. You'll have to miss a couple of days of school, but I'm sure you won't mind that," she said to Harry, then saw his expression and said, "Or it can wait until the winter holidays if you prefer?"

"I would."

"Alright," she agreed with a smile. "In the meantime, I will start you on an anticonvulsant."

The next ten minutes were devoted to her and Snape talking about the potion. Snape had been reading up on epilepsy and apparently there were three anticonvulsant potions and he wanted to know why she picked the one she did. Kirith then turned to Harry again.

"I'm sure you realise there are certain activities that you shouldn't be participating in unsupervised—flying, swimming, anything where having a seizure will put you at risk of serious harm."

"But I can fly, can't I? Just not alone."

"You can but I advise against it. Try to avoid extreme heights and make sure your flying partner is skilled enough to be able to catch you if you fall. It should be an adult, not just a friend."

She gave him a booklet with a variety of medical ID bracelets and a form, and told him to start keeping a seizure diary so they could keep track of when he had them, and then moved on to examining his blind eye. This was much quicker, with just a few diagnostic charms, but the verdict didn't make Harry happy.

"There's no reason to give you a replacement eye," she told him. "The damage is to your optic nerve, not the eyeball. The nerve is what we'd replace—we couldn't repair it; it's been too long since the damage was done for that."

"Oh," Harry said, trying not to sound disappointed. He really liked the idea of having a magical eye.

Kirith noticed his disappointment and smiled sympathetically. "Having a prosthetic is still an option, but it would be non-essential. However, we couldn't do it right now in either case. Forging a magical nerve, especially one so close to the brain, is delicate work, and we have to be especially careful working on children or teenagers in case it interferes with development. Doing so could affect them not only physically but magically. With epilepsy, you would be at even greater risk, and if there's scarring in your brain then it may not be possible to create a working magical nervous system at all. Whatever the case, I don't want to do anything until after the MRI and extended MEEG."

Harry's shoulder's slumped. "So I might never get my sight back?"

"It's a minor possibility, yes, but don't lose all hope. We won't know anything until the scans are done."

* * *

A few days before the end of the month, an owl brought a small parcel for Harry. It wasn't the bird that delivered Neville's letters, and Hermione's came through the Muggle post still as she had no bird for herself, so he opened it with a frown. Inside was a photo album and a note.

 _Mr Evans,_

 _Professor Snape said you had no photos of your parents. I asked several people who knew them if they had photographs to spare and this was the result. It might not make up for losing your parents, but I hope it helps._

 _Yours,_

 _Professor McGonagall_

Harry looked through them with a lump in his throat. Snape was right about him having his mother's eyes and he was glad he hadn't had an iris re-colouration, even temporarily, because it was a connection to his mother and he wouldn't give that up for the world. He had his father's dark hair, although his was tamer than James' wild mess, but that's all the similarity he could see between them and he supposed he must look mostly like Lily.

He spent all morning looking at the pictures, staring at their happy, smiling faces, committing them to memory, and didn't go downstairs and face Snape until he was sure the tears dried and his eyes were no longer red.

On the final day of August, Snape took Harry to Hermione's house in Oxford. Snape needed to get prepared at Hogwarts for the next year, so Harry would go to King's Cross station the next day with the Grangers.

They were nice people. Hermione had told them all about Harry—everything, which made him nervous on top of meeting his friend's parents for the first time. He'd never been to a friend's house before on account of not _having_ a friend before. But they were perfectly friendly, buying Chinese takeout for dinner and watching fondly as Harry and Hermione talked.

After dinner, while Mr and Mrs Granger did the washing up, Hermione inspected Harry's cuffs.

"So you can't do Wish magic at all?"

"Nothing. Can't even turn a matchstick into a needle. It sucks."

"I'm sure Dumbledore had a good reason," Hermione said.

"Yeah, he doesn't like a kid having so much power."

"Maybe he just wants you to learn how to do wand magic without your Wish Magic getting in the way, so you'll know how to do both if you ever need to."

Harry said nothing. Hermione thought well of Dumbledore, heavily influenced by the books that spoke reverently of him; she wouldn't agree with Harry's distrust of the man. Harry hadn't mentioned that Dumbledore also left him with the Dursleys even after being specifically told that Vernon used to hit him, and he wasn't going to even if it might change Hermione's opinion on Dumbledore.

He wasn't entirely sure why. Embarrassment, maybe, or fear that she would tell her parents. He hated that Dumbledore had done it, but he still didn't want other people getting involved with it all. He didn't want their pity, and he didn't trust in their help. Besides, Vernon had only hit Harry once this summer. What did he have to complain about really?


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

The next morning, Mr Granger drove them to London as Mrs Granger had to work. Harry thanked them both for the hospitality before leaving, and when they reached platform nine and three-quarters he went to find a carriage while Hermione said her goodbyes. Neville found them not long after the train set off, and they spent the journey together. It was much better than travelling alone and invisible. He got to talk and didn't have to worry about getting in people's way, but he ended up spending half the journey sleeping. He wasn't sure why; he'd slept fine the night before.

Only when they reached Hogsmeade did he wonder if he should have spent the journey exploring the train and meeting the other new first years. While Hermione and Neville went off with the majority of the students, Harry joined the rest of the first year students in crowding around Hagrid. He was both glad and dismayed to find that he didn't stand out from them by being taller.

On the boats across the lake, Harry ended up with three other boys. One had bright blue hair—"My brother's idea of a joke"—and another bent over the side within seconds of setting off and promptly emptied his guts into the water.

"He gets travel sick," explained the fourth boy, a baby-faced blond who rubbed the sick boy's back. "His potion wore off. He'll be alright when we get back on dry land. I'm Alex, by the way. Alex Stone. This is Tyler Lyle."

"Harry Evans," Harry replied, and looked to the boy with blue hair who introduced himself as Ed Coleman. Harry recognised the surname—Nick Coleman was the Gryffindor Seeker, but he couldn't mention that because he had no plausible explanation for how he knew that.

Tyler didn't look much better once they left the boats, but he at least stopped throwing up. Hagrid led them into the castle and handed them off to McGonagall, who took them into a small side room and gave a brief introduction of the houses and house points system, then told Ed sternly that his hair was not an appropriate colour for school.

"It was my brother Nick's idea," Ed retorted, then added more calmly, "Professor."

McGonagall's lips pursed, but she waved her wand over him and his hair turned to a more normal light brown, then she led them into the Great Hall. Harry got to show off his knowledge when some of his peers marvelled at the ceiling, and then their attention was drawn to the Sorting Hat and they listened to its song—different from the year before—before McGonagall called them all up to be sorted.

"Calais, Sebastian!" she began, and a skinny boy with dark hair swallowed thickly and approached the stool. A long minute later, the hat yelled out, "Ravenclaw!"

Four more people were called—Ed Coleman, Colin Creevey, Orion Devaux, Rebecca DiCamillo—and then it was Harry's turn. He nervously brushed a finger over his forehead as he went up to the stool and sat down, half expecting his Concealing Charm to fail and everyone to recognise him and call him out.

No one did, and the hat fell over his face to hide his eyes.

 _I wondered when you'd be back,_ said a voice in his ear.

'Real student this time, so you can actually sort me,' Harry thought to it.

 _Hmm, the question is to where. An excellent mind, exceptionally powerful. You'd certainly thrive in Ravenclaw._

'I wouldn't mind that.'

The hat made a thoughtful noise. _You wouldn't do badly in Hufflepuff, either, though._

'Hufflepuff? I… really?'

The hat chuckled. _Really. They would welcome you with warm and open arms, but on a deeper look I think you need something a little different than the Hufflepuffs or Ravenclaws offer. In that case, the best place to put you would be—_

"SLYTHERIN!"

He looked over at the Gryffindor table when he hopped off the stool. Neville and Hermione looked surprised but not hateful and Hermione even managed a weak smile. He headed for the Slytherin table, nodding his thanks to the people who greeted him. When he glanced at the teachers' table, he caught Snape's eye and although the man's expression didn't change, Harry thought maybe he approved.

Tyler Lyle ended up in Slytherin and Alex Stone went to Hufflepuff. Ginny Weasley was the last person to get sorted, going to Gryffindor, and then the tables piled with food and the hall filled with the noise of chattering voices and cutlery against plates.

Harry sat opposite Tyler. He was used to eating only as little as he needed, so his plate was less filled than most of the students around him, but Tyler wasn't eating _anything_ , just drinking water. Now that Harry could see him properly in the light of the Great Hall, he was glad Alex mentioned that he was a boy because looking at him, Harry thought he wouldn't be sure. Tyler's face was very androgynous and his mud-brown hair hung past his shoulders. He could easily be mistaken for a girl.

"You alright?" Harry asked.

"Yeah, just waiting for my stomach to settle. Harry, wasn't it?"

"Yeah, nice to meet you."

"You too. So… pleased about being in Slytherin?"

Harry shrugged. "It's okay, I guess. I've got a couple of friends in Gryffindor though; hopefully they won't mind me being a Slytherin."

"If they do just give 'em a punch, knock some sense into 'em, it usually works for me."

Harry couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

They were halfway through dessert when the events of the year before came up.

"Is it true Harry Potter killed a teacher here last year?" asked a fellow first year called Tabitha Sinclair. Harry almost choked on his chocolate cake, but he should have known it would come up sooner or later.

"It's bullshit," said sixth year prefect Lisa Patterson. "Quirrell died, but it wasn't Potter. I've done the maths; he's only about twelve and if he was here, we'd have known about it."

"Shouldn't he be a student here then, if he's our age?"

"He could have gone to Beauxbatons or Durmstrang, but it's possible he's a squib."

That was greeted by mutters that suggested it had been discussed before and some people strongly disagreed.

Another first year boy, Orion Devaux, scoffed. "He couldn't have defeated You Know Who if he were a squib," he said haughtily. "No squib would be able to do that."

"Unless he wasn't a squib initially," a third year suggested, "but the curse used on him and whatever it was that kept him alive drained his magic, left him useless. They'd certainly want to keep that quiet, which would explain why no one's seen or heard from him since it happened."

Harry was grateful when the discussion moved on to other things for the rest of the meal.

After they finished eating, Dumbledore stood and drew their attention.

"Now that you've eaten I'd like to make a few announcements. Mr Filch would like me to remind you all that magic is not to be used in the corridors, and that the forest is strictly forbidden to all students. I would also like to introduce our newest member of staff, Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher Gilderoy Lockhart."

The applause for this announcement was thundering. A great deal of people stared dreamily at Lockhart, who stood up and bowed then waved, smiled, and blew kisses at them all. So focused with his adoring fans, he didn't seem to notice that the other half of the students looked at him with disinterest or disgust. Harry didn't much care for him. He'd flicked through Lockhart's books during the summer and thought they sounded more like fiction stories than instructions on Defence Against the Dark Arts.

With the announcements done, Lisa Patterson led the first years down to the Slytherin common room. It was larger and more spaced out than Gryffindor, but darker and less welcoming, Harry thought, despite the roaring fire. From the entrance there was a large open space in front and to the right, windows in the wall looking out into the lake, but Lisa led them past this to a narrower space with a door on either side. She turned to face them, gesturing to each door as she spoke.

"Girls on my left, boys on my right. Curfew is at nine but you only have to be back in the common room by then—when you actually go to bed is your choice, but it's also your responsibility to get up on time in the morning. You'll get your class timetables at breakfast tomorrow so don't miss it. It's served from half-seven; first class is at half-eight. Welcome to Slytherin."

They separated and went through the doors. The boys' door led into a hall the length of the common room, with seven more doors on the opposite side and an eighth door immediately to their right, leading to the bathroom. The first years were in the dorm at the very bottom, all five of them, and their trunks were already at the end of their beds. As well as Harry, Tyler, and Orion, there was Stuart Travis—tall, with a buzzcut, and hardly speaking—and Cid Villiers, who swore colourfully shortly after introducing himself.

"You guys don't mind if I sleep in the buff, right? I've forgotten my pyjamas."

Harry had no idea what to say to that. He wasn't sure he did approve, but he didn't think Cid would listen even if he said no.

" _I_ mind," Orion said like his was the only opinion that matters. "You may sleep in your underwear."

Cid turned on him, expression incredulous. "I _may_? The fuck do you think you are, my mother?"

Orion sniffed. "I'm sure your mother would wash your mouth out if she could hear you right now."

"Yeah," Cid said, unconcerned, "that good ol' Bubble Mouth Hex. It's not so bad after the first seven or eight times."

Harry cleared his throat, drawing their attention. "Guys, I need to tell you all something."

Tyler jumped onto his bed, looking at Harry expectantly as he pulled a fluffy white cat on his lap and pet her; Cid didn't look up from digging through his trunk just in case he missed his pyjamas the first time; Orion settled his gaze on Harry like it was a chore he was gracefully doing and ought to be congratulated for; and Stuart stopped on his way to the door, toiletry bag in hand.

"I'm epileptic. I don't know if you know what that is but it means I have seizures sometimes, but it's nothing serious, I just need to let you know so that if it happens you don't freak out or anything."

"What's a seizure?" Cid asked, still digging through his trunk.

"Isn't that where you fall over and start shaking and stuff?" Tyler said.

"The bad ones, yeah. If that happens you need to get Madam Pomfrey or a professor, but most of the time, it's just little ones and I sort of zone out for a couple of minutes and sometimes my face or my hands will twitch or something. It probably looks weird, but like I said it's—"

The door opened suddenly, so hard it almost hit the wall, and Draco Malfoy stalked into the room.

"So, you're the new first years," he said, looking at each of them critically. "You don't look like much." His eyes settled on Tyler and he blinked. "You're in the wrong dorm. Girls are over the other side."

Tyler rolled his eyes, pushing his cat down as she nosed at his chin. He'd clearly had people saying things like that before. "I can show you my dick if you want."

Orion's lip curled. "You're all disgusting."

"Who are you?" Malfoy asked him.

"Orion Damian Lucas Devaux. To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?"

Cid sniggered. Orion ignored him.

"Draco Malfoy. Are you related to Arianne Devaux?"

Orion nodded. "She's my mother's cousin."

Malfoy almost looked impressed. "My father speaks well of her." He turned on Harry. "What's your name, shorty? What's wrong with your eye?"

"It's blind. I'm Harry Evans."

"You pureblood?"

"Half."

"Hmph. At least you're not a complete Mudblood. What about you?" he asked Tyler. "What's your name and status?"

"Tyler Lyle and none of your business."

"You can't be _Muggleborn_?" Orion asked as if he genuinely couldn't believe it possible. "Not in Slytherin."

Malfoy shot him an approving glance. Tyler looked annoyed.

"Half."

Malfoy rounded on Cid. "What about you?"

"Cid Villiers. Purer than angel's piss, but I've got nothing against half-bloods," he said with a glance at Harry and Tyler.

"Stuart Travis, pureblood," Stuart said in a quiet, but not nervous, voice when Malfoy looked at him.

"Excellent," Orion declared, grabbing his toiletry bag from his trunk. "You and I are friends. I'm not hanging around halfies and that vulgar boy anymore than I have to."

Stuart didn't look concerned that he'd just been told they were friends regardless of whether he wanted to be, just traipsed out the room with Orion and toward the bathroom.

Harry exchanged glances with Cid and Tyler and smiled weakly. Cid rolled his eyes at Orion's behaviour and Tyler smiled back, and Harry felt a rush of warmth towards them. Having spent the last year befriending two Gryffindors and now being older than his yearmates and not very good at making friends from sheer lack of practice, he worried he'd end up lonely even now he was a proper student. But with Orion's dismissal of them, Harry felt the beginnings of a bond with Cid and Tyler and hopefully that would grow to a proper friendship.

* * *

Harry woke the next morning to the sounds of movement from one of his roommates. He wanted to go back to sleep, exhausted despite sleeping through the night, but he forced himself up. He opened his curtains, saw Stuart was awake, ran a hand over his face, and then snapped the curtains shut again. His scar. He completely forgot about it.

He grabbed his wand, put on the Concealing Charm, and only then left his bed again. He didn't have a watch or clock, but there was one on Tyler's bedside table with glowing hands that revealed it was half past six. He almost went back to bed for another half hour, but Stuart was collecting his shower things and Harry realised that in half an hour the bathroom would probably be crowded and busy. He didn't look forward to dealing with that, so he forced himself to get his own towel and washbag and go shower.

Finally having access to a proper bathroom for the past year, he no longer viewed showers as a luxury and was quick about his cleaning. Other students were starting to appear by then, but Cid and Tyler were still asleep when Harry got back to the first years' dorm. Orion was awake, and exchanged morning greetings with Stuart but ignored Harry. Harry wasn't bothered.

He dressed, debated taking his school bag—a new messenger bag so he could keep his backpack for his Famous Figurines, which wouldn't fit in his trunk—but decided not to, and left for the common room. He didn't know what classes he would have that day so there was no point taking his bag until he knew what books to take.

A few students were in the common room, yawning as they went for the exit or sprawling in chairs to wait for friends. There was only one other first year there, an east-Asian girl who kept looking between her watch and the door to the girls' dorms and sighing irritably. Harry hesitated, then approached her, swallowing down his nerves. He wasn't used to dealing with people and was painfully aware that he didn't really know how to make friends. His interactions with Hermione and Neville up to this point were hardly standard. But he didn't want to end up as the loser kid in his year with no friends, so he went up to the girl and said, "Hi."

She looked at him, startled. "Hi."

"I'm Harry Evans. You're a first year too, aren't you?" he asked, suddenly worried that he was remembering her wrong from the night before.

Fortunately, she nodded. "Jia Liao."

"Are the other girls being slow? Two of my roommates aren't even awake yet."

"They're going to be late then. All the girls are awake, but I'm waiting for my sister. She's supposed to take me to the Hospital Wing before breakfast."

"I could take you," Harry offered. "I have to go there, too."

First and second year medicines were handled by Madam Pomfrey, annoyingly, so he had to go to the Hospital Wing every morning to take his anticonvulsant.

"Do you know where it is? How?"

"I… had to spend some time here, in the castle," he explained reluctantly, unable to come up with a plausible lie. "It's a long story."

"Oh." She looked at the girls' dorms, bit her lip, then nodded. "Alright then."

He smiled, glad he'd managed his first normal one-on-one interaction with a fellow student. Maybe spending several years on the streets in solitude hadn't screwed up his social skills entirely. They even managed to chat on their way up to the Hospital Wing, discussing the classes they were looking forward to. Jia was most excited about Potions and Herbology; she wanted to be a master potioneer when she grew up.

"What about you? What do you want to be when you're older?"

Writer. Historian. Adventurer. Auror. Teacher. Minster for Magic. Assassin. Healer. Office worker. Charms expert. Animal breeder. Inventor. Book store owner. Husband. Parent. Home owner. Old man. Alive.

Harry shrugged. "Never really thought about it."

At the Hospital Wing, Jia didn't ask what Harry's potion was for so Harry didn't ask about hers, either.

When they reached the Great Hall it was already half full and they found the other first year girls at the Slytherin table—Toni Kaidkin, Victoria Vaisey, and Tabitha Sinclair. The boys had yet to make an appearance, but they turned up just as Snape was handing out the timetables, arguing over whose fault it was that they got lost on the way up. Orion blamed Cid and Tyler, who blamed him. Only Stuart remained silent, utterly unconcerned about it all.

They had Transfiguration, Herbology, and History of Magic that day. Harry earned five points in Herbology for correctly answering several of Professor Sprout's questions, and twenty more in Transfiguration for being the only one to completely turn his matchstick into a needle. It made up for History of Magic still being the most boring class in existence, and although he liked the praise it didn't feel like that great an accomplishment. He was still painfully aware that, without his Wish Magic, he was barely half the wizard he could be.

Professor Binns set them some reading for homework, which Harry had no intention of doing because it was stuff he'd already read before, and Professor Sprout gave them some questions that he was able to finish in ten minutes, but McGonagall set their first ever essay. Harry worked on it in the common room with Jia before heading to the dorm, intending to do some extra-curricular (and rather more interesting) reading on history, but Cid snatched his book away before he even got started.

"I can't be friends with a nerd," he told Harry. "We've got our whole school career to study. Hang out with us."

'Us' was him and Tyler. Orion and Stuart weren't in the dorm, and the three of them weren't going to get on with Orion anyway. Cid had already declared the other boy an irredeemable bastard.

"So which of your parents has Muggle blood?" Cid asked Harry and Tyler, the three of them lounging in the middle of the room and sharing sweets. Cid had come to Hogwarts with an entire tuck box dedicated solely to snacks.

"My mum was Muggleborn," Harry told him.

"Was? Is she…?"

"Dead. She died when I was a baby. My dad too."

"That sucks."

"Who do you live with?" Tyler asked him.

Harry hesitated, then answered, "A foster family." He didn't want to say his aunt and uncle because he had no intention of going back there next summer, but he didn't want to say he was a homeless street rat, either. Saying a foster family fitted with what Hermione and Neville thought, too; he hadn't told them the identity of the 'Muggle family' that Dumbledore sent him to live with.

Tyler nodded, but Cid asked, "What's a foster family?"

Harry looked at him in surprise. "You don't know about foster families?"

Cid shook his head. "What is that?"

"Wizards don't have them," Tyler told Harry, then he explained the concept to Cid.

"Interesting idea," Cid said when he was done. "I'm guessing you've got a completely Muggle parent then if you know that much about Muggles."

"Sort of. My mum, she was a Muggle. She died when I was six, but I don't actually know who my father was. I'm, uh…" he scratched his cheek, giving Cid a cautious look, "I'm half-blood by adoption."

Cid shrugged. "That's cool."

Harry frowned. "What does that mean? Half-blood by adoption?"

"You know about wizard adoptions?" Tyler asked and then, when Harry shook his head, explained, "A full blood adoption involves a ritual so the child actually becomes genetically connected to their adopted parents. It makes them a completely legitimate heir, even if the parents have other, non-adopted children. It even affects appearances a bit. I had a smaller nose and bigger ears before I was adopted by Marcus—a family friend—and my eyes were more green than blue."

"That's impressive."

Tyler nodded. "It means people like me can claim half-blood status even though my birth parents are Muggle, although for the real blood purists I'm still lower on the social ladder, and there's some that don't believe adoption rituals counteract Muggle blood. I'd prefer people like Devaux and Malfoy think I've got one magical birth parent."

"I won't say nothing," Cid told him. "It doesn't make any difference to me."

Harry agreed and Tyler smiled gratefully.

* * *

Harry settled into school life fairly easily. He found it harder to get up in the mornings than he used to, but he wasn't used to having a schedule to work to. He often found himself wishing he could nap in class, but he blamed it on the boredom of redoing lessons he learnt the year before. Only Defence was new—but not in a good way. Lockhart didn't teach Defence Against the Dark Arts, he taught Adventures of Gilderoy Lockhart. If Harry was generous, he might have said Lockhart was trying to teach them by giving examples of his own successes against dark creatures and magic, but it just came off as narcissistic storytelling. After three lessons, Harry thought that even a Voldemort-possessed-Quirrell was a better teacher.

On Saturday morning, a parcel came for Harry at breakfast. It contained the medical bracelet he'd sent off for, a simple stainless steel chain with a flat platform etched to indicate that he suffered seizures. There was room for more information; if the anticonvulsant he was on worked, he would have it added to the bracelet.

Before he could slip it on, a pale hand reached over his shoulder and snatched it from him.

"What is this?" Draco Malfoy asked, sneering. "Have you no taste at all? It's almost as bad as those cuffs you wear. I suppose that's what happens when you're half blind."

Harry scowled at him and snatched the bracelet back. "Sod off, Malfoy. This could save my life."

He slipped it over his wrist and got up. Across the hall, Hermione and Neville were just leaving the Gryffindor table. Harry hadn't had chance to talk to them all week so he waited for them out in the Entrance Hall and was glad when they approached without prompting.

"Are we still friends even though I'm in Slytherin?" he asked, knowing their opinion on his new house and worried that they hadn't spoken all week because they'd been avoiding him.

"Of course we're still friends," Hermione assured him with a smile.

"As long as you don't turn into Malfoy," Neville added, but he smiled to show it was a joke.

"Don't worry, I won't," Harry assured them, grinning. "He's a prick. Do you want to hang out?"

They nodded and decided to go out onto the grounds, the weather reasonable enough for it as long as they had their cloaks on. It wasn't like Harry could convert an empty classroom to a sitting room anymore, and he hadn't told them about the Room of Requirement yet. It was a secret he liked having.

"How are you finding classes without your Wish Magic?" Neville asked as they headed for a patch of grass by the lake.

"It's okay, but I'd still like it back. To be honest, lessons are boring. I know all the theory and the spells are pretty easy too. I wish I was taking second year classes."

"What do you think of Lockhart?"

Harry groaned and Neville laughed.

"Yeah, he's pretty bad, right?"

"He's not that awful," Hermione objected.

"He is," Neville insisted, and told Harry, "Our first class, he bought a cage of Cornish Pixies and released them into the classroom, and then he left _us_ to clean them up. He couldn't control them at all."

Hermione frowned. "You make it sound like he's completely useless."

"He is. Hermione, those pixies hung me from the ceiling by my ears. You were the only one that could do anything about them, we'd be better of with you as our teacher."

"No you wouldn't," Hermione objected, but she looked pleased at the compliment.

* * *

That evening, Harry stuffed his wash things into his bag and took them up to the Room of Requirement, pacing in front of it three times then opening the door to the deluxe bathroom he'd been using the year before. The Slytherin bathroom had a bath in it, tucked behind a curtain for privacy, but it was a regular tub.

Harry preferred the big, ergonomically-shaped bath the Room gave him, the bottom of which curved in a wave. It was perfectly designed to let him lay comfortably submerged up to the neck, but at no risk of drowning if he happened to fall asleep—which he had, on occasion. He even got a selection of scented and coloured bubbles, and despite being comparatively shallow the water never got cold.

He was also glad for the privacy. For the first time in a week, he could finally spend some time completely alone without worrying that anyone would walk in on him or call for him. In all the time he spent invisible, he wanted company and friends. Now that he had both, he found himself craving solitude more than he'd have thought. He was glad for Jia, Cid, and Tyler, but he hadn't realised how exhausting it was to be so social.

He filled the bath with blue bubbles, stripped, and got in, sighing happily as he slid beneath the deliciously warm water. He closed his eyes, revelling in the quiet, and seriously considered spending the night there—although not in the bath, obviously.

Half an hour later, he heard the voice.

" _Come… come to me… Let me rip you… Let me tear you… Let me kill you…"_

He jumped, splashing water over the sides of the tub and looking around wildly. The room was empty and the door locked, and there was no sign of ghosts. He listened hard, utterly still to keep the water from splashing, but there was nothing else.

Was he hearing things? He hoped not. There was enough wrong with him without going insane too.

He looked around once more, reassuring himself the room really was empty and he hadn't missed anything with his limited vision, but there was nothing there. He still decided to get out. Wherever the voice came from, it really ruined the enjoyment of a relaxing bath.

* * *

For the first years, the second week of term meant flying lessons. For most of them, this was good news; everyone was looking forward to flying lessons—except Tyler.

"I don't fly. I'm not getting on a broom."

"It's not that terrible," Cid tried to convince him. "Surely you can't get sick from hovering a few feet off the ground. It's not like Madam Hooch will let us fly fast or anything, not on our first lesson."

"I get sick riding a bicycle."

"I think you're just bitching because we're having it with the Hufflepuffs."

Tyler's responding scowl said Cid wasn't entirely wrong. Since the second day of classes, Alex Stone, whom Tyler had been best friends with since they were six, had been ignoring him. Apparently Tyler being a Slytherin and Alex a Hufflepuff meant they couln't hang out anymore.

Tyler needn't have worried about flying class. Madam Hooch spent so much of the lesson telling others to stop flying so high that she hardly paid attention to the fact that Tyler barely left the ground. Harry was amongst those regularly scolded; Hooch even pointed out that he was under flying restrictions, but as he survived a fall of twenty feet, even if it wasn't completely unharmed, he wasn't satisfied having to stay under ten feet.

She was just telling him off yet again when something whizzed through the air beside Harry and crashed into Chris Harper, one of the Hufflepuffs. Chris wobbled dangerously, cried out as he clutched at the broom—and a several small bubbles left his mouth, floating off in the breeze until they popped.

Everyone burst into laughter, until Hooch sternly ordered them all down, her grim expression killing their humour. She easily countered the hex on Chris, and then turned to Tyler, who stood with Alex.

"Did you cast that spell?"

"Yes," Tyler said, his repentant tone rather spoiled by the glare he shot Chris.

"Detention, Mr Lyle. You never hex someone who is in mid-flight. It is _incredibly_ dangerous."

Tyler mumbled an apology, but after class, he grumbled to Harry and Cid, "He deserves to fall off his broom. He's the one that convinced Alex not to hang out with me just because of our houses."

"Just hex him on the ground next time," Cid suggested. "Preferably when there aren't any teachers about."

* * *

Harry continued to breeze through classes, bored by the theory and picking up the practical fairly quickly, usually one of the first to learn a new spell.

In the second week of October, he fell asleep in a class. He woke up to Jia jabbing him in the side and all the Transfiguration class watching him. Most of the other kids were holding back laughter, but Professor McGonagall was unsurprisingly not impressed.

"Is my class not interesting enough for you, Mr Evans?"

Harry flushed. "Sorry."

"Five points from Slytherin. Sleep in your dormitory, not my classroom. Please pay attention from now on."

"Yes, professor."

"Are you okay?" Jia asked him at lunch that day, which Harry picked at slowly, head on his hand and elbow on the table. "You're tired a lot. Is it because of your epilepsy?"

Harry shook his head, trying and failing to restrain a yawn. "It could be a side effect of my potion, though."

"Maybe you should see Madam Pomfrey."

He nodded, but that evening went to see Snape. He knew more about Harry's potion than Madam Pomfrey.

"Your potion shouldn't cause drowsiness. It's not one of the known side effects and I'd have expected you to show signs before now, but I'll contact Healer Karpel. In the mean time, try to get plenty of sleep—not in your classes," he added with a stern look, and Harry nodded.

Snape got back to him a week later. Kirith agreed the potion shouldn't cause tiredness, but would try him on a different one because he'd been having more absence seizures over the past couple of months as well.

The last weekend of October brought a Hogsmeade weekend for the older students. The first and second years took advantage of the quieter common room to play games and get the best seats. The second years got the absolute best ones and they enraptured the first years with stories of the troll from last Hallowe'en. Harry had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing or admitting the truth when Malfoy told an elaborate tale of nearly getting clubbed to death and surviving by the skin of his teeth with some quick spell work.

Hallowe'en itself was much more enjoyable when Harry could sit at the table to eat with everyone else and it wasn't interrupted by trolls. But then after, when they were about the head down to the dungeons, a voice yelled from one of the upper floors, "Mrs Norris has been killed!"

Harry and most of the rest of the Slytherins all turned and hurried up, curious to see if it was true and what happened. They found a crowd collected on the second floor and Harry, being the smallest, squeezed and elbowed his way through until he reached the front. In a space between them and a group on the other side of the corridor were Hermione and Neville, both pale and nervous. On the wall, Mrs Norris hung by her tail from a torch bracket and above her, written in foot-tall red paint, were the words:

 _THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED_  
 _ENEMIES OF THE HEIR BEWARE_

Draco Malfoy pushed his way forwards, grinning maliciously as he took in the scene. "Enemies of the heir, beware! You'll be next, Mudbloods!"

Before Harry could do something like kick him, or go forward to ask Hermione and Neville what was going on, the crowd behind him parted to let Mr Filch through. Silence fell as they all watched him reach the centre, notice his cat, and then turn on Neville and Hermione.

"You—you killed my cat," he said, voice shaking with quiet rage. "You killed my cat!"

"We didn't!" Hermione cried. Neville backed away, turning even paler, but before Filch could reach them—

"Argus!"

The crowd on the other side of the corridor parted to let Dumbledore through, followed by several other teachers. They took in the situation, then Dumbledore took down Mrs Norris, dismissed all the students, and beckoned Filch, Hermione, and Neville to accompany him. Harry watched them go, irritated. If it weren't for the cuffs on his wrist, he'd turn invisible and follow, but he was forced to accompany his house mates back down to Slytherin. He'd ask Hermione and Neville for details tomorrow.

Back in Slytherin, all conversation was about what happened. Harry went with Cid and Tyler to their dorm and told them everything he'd seen—they couldn't see from the rear of the crowd—and dug through his trunk for _Hogwarts: A History_.

"What's the Chamber of Secrets?" Tyler asked.

Harry sat on his bed and flicked through his book until he came to the section he was looking for.

" 'The Chamber of Secrets,' " he read, " 'is a legendary chamber hidden somewhere within Hogwarts and is said to be the home of a terrible monster, left behind by the founder Salazar Slytherin. It is said that when Slytherin's one true heir returns to Hogwarts, he will open the chamber and purge the school of all those with impure blood.' "

"Impure… so people like me."

Cid shook his head. "No one but us knows about you; you're probably alright."

" 'Probably alright'," Tyler repeated as his cat, Aurora, jumped up on his lap. "That's not comforting. Is there seriously a monster going around attacking people? What kind of monster anyway? That's a bit vague."

"It doesn't say," Harry answered, closing the book. "But it's probably not real. It's just a legend. If there was a monster under the school, someone would have found it sometime in the last thousand years."

"So what happened to Mrs Norris?"

"Student prank," Cid answered airily. "It's not like there's anyone who likes Filch or that fucking cat."

Tyler didn't look convinced.

* * *

Harry left the Great Hall the next morning at the same time as Hermione and Neville and they slipped into an empty classroom so the two Gryffindors could tell him about the night before. Neville had left halfway through the feast to use the toilet and had found Mrs Norris on his way back to the Great Hall.

"But there's a bathroom on the ground floor," Harry said. "Why'd you go up to the second?"

Neville flushed. "I needed a… y'know? I don't like doing it in the other bathrooms, so I went up to Gryffindor."

"Doing… oh. Okay." Harry thought that was weird, but then he'd been forced to used public bathrooms for all his toilet needs for years. Maybe the idea of have a preferred toilet for certain functions was normal. "What were you doing there?" he asked Hermione

"I went looking for him because he was taking so long. We met on the second floor."

"So what happened after?"

"Professor Dumbledore examined Mrs Norris. She's not really dead, she's just petrified. Professor Sprout is growing Mandrakes; they'll make a restorative draught when they're matured."

"Does he think you did it?"

They both shook their head.

"He said no second year could do that," Neville said. "He said it was really dark magic. Mr Filch wanted us punished, but Professor Dumbledore said we could go."

"I'm going to research it in the library," Hermione declared. "I'm sure I've read about the Chamber of Secrets before, but I can't think where."

"It's in _Hogwarts: A History_ ," Harry said, following her out of the classroom. "But there's not much in there. It only briefly mentions the Chamber and there's nothing about the monster."

"I'll have to borrow a copy from the library," she said. "I had to leave my copy behind to fit all my Lockhart books in my trunk."

Harry hid a smile and Neville rolled his eyes. Harry had had a similar problem, but he had room to stick the rest of his books in his still-enlarged backpack.

They spent several hours at the library, searching through books. Neville left them after just a couple of hours, claiming he'd had enough research to last him the whole year. Harry stayed, but he gave up reading to instead fold his arms on the table and rest his head on his arms, dozing. He was constantly tired these days, no matter how long or how well he slept at night or how many naps he took during the day.

Hermione woke him with a shake at lunch time. He yawned and stretched then helped her clear up their books.

"Who do you think it is?" she asked as they left the library.

"The Heir of Slytherin? I don't know. You really think there's someone siccing a monster on people?"

"Professor Dumbledore couldn't cure Mrs Norris, which makes me think whoever attacked her wasn't… well, human."

"Are you worried?"

She looked surprised at his question. "Worried?"

"That it might get you."

"Oh. No, I've been so focused on the legend that I'd forgotten that I'm one of the 'impure'."

"If it is real, then whoever it is is probably a first or seventh year."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because this is the first time it's happened, which means either they've only just got here—a first year—or they're not worried about getting caught because they're leaving soon—a seventh year."

"Or they've only just found the Chamber," she suggested.

"Maybe, but it's an heir. Don't you think it's the kind of thing that would be passed down through the family?"

"I suppose," she hedged. "Do you think…"

"What?"

"Malfoy. Did you hear what he said yesterday?"

"That Mudblood comment? Yeah. Bastard."

"Do you think he could be the heir?"

"Malfoy?" he said incredulously, then thought about it. "Mind you… he does claim his whole family has been in Slytherin for generations and he was looking pretty smug this morning. I guess it's possible."

"You could keep an eye on him," Hermione suggested. "And anyone else in Slytherin who looks suspicious."

Harry snorted. "We're all suspicious in Slytherin. I doubt the heir's going to start boasting about it. We like our secrets too much."

* * *

The next weekend brought the first Quidditch match of the year—Gryffindor versus Slytherin. For Harry, it was way more fun to watch from the stands, cheering for his house with his friends, instead of floating alone or standing on the ground and picking at house at random.

Gryffindor won by over two hundred points. Their seeker Nick Coleman—the brother guilty of turning Ed Coleman's hair blue on the first day of term—had clearly been practising because he was much better than he had been the year before. It made their already great team better.

On the way back to the castle afterwards, Harry fell in behind Draco Malfoy and the other second years and heard Malfoy claim, "We wouldn't have lost if I'd been playing."

"Why didn't you try for the team?" Pansy Parkinson asked him.

"I wanted to, but Father wants me to focus on my studies. I'll join next year, though. When I'm on the team, Slytherin will never lose a match."

Harry rolled his eyes but said nothing. He didn't want to get in a fight, and it wasn't like he actually knew how skilled Malfoy was at flying. For all Harry knew, he really could be as good as he claimed, though Harry doubted it.

The next morning, Colin Creevey was found petrified in a hallway. According to his dormmates, he'd snuck out after being told by the Weasley twins that there was a cerberus locked in a corridor on the third floor. He wanted to get a photograph of it.

By Monday, the whole school knew and the fear that had been only mild after the attack on Mrs Norris was now thick throughout the school. It was one thing for a cat to get attacked, something else entirely for a student. There were all sorts of rumours and theories as to who the culprit was, some of which utterly baffled Harry.

"Tara Williams?" he said incredulously to Ed Coleman in Herbology on Tuesday, a lesson the Slytherins shared with the Ravenclaws. "The head girl? She's a Hufflepuff!"

Ed shrugged. "Nick reckons that makes her a prime suspect. Everyone's going to think it's a Slytherin student while the real heir is hiding in one of the other common rooms and laughing at the fear they're creating and pretending they're perfectly innocent."

Harry doubted that. The Slytherins were all too proud of their house; he didn't think the heir would be any different. Besides, how could the heir of Slytherin end up in any other house?

No more attacks came through November and slowly the fear eased a little, though most people still never went anywhere alone, especially the first years.

Hermione and Neville, meanwhile, were getting secretive and spending less time with Harry. He might have worried about that, but he was too tired to waste energy worrying about things. He even fell asleep in Potions one afternoon. Snape sent him up to the Hospital Wing with a note to Madam Pomfrey to ask that she do a full examination of him. She didn't find anything wrong, but she let him spend the rest of the afternoon napping in the ward.

At the start of December, he got a letter from Kirith Karpel saying his MRI and extended MEEG was booked for 28th December, the MRI in the morning and the MEEG afterwards to last as long as necessary. She would do some tests to try and figure out what was making him so tired, and suggested he stop taking the anticonvulsant. The second one she tried him on wasn't helping either and it might be that he was suffering from a unique side-effect to one of the ingredients. Harry was just glad the holidays were finally in sight; he could sleep as much as he liked during the three week break.

A couple of weeks before the end of term, notices for a duelling club appeared on all the noticeboards. Harry was really interested in the idea and he turned up on the evening of the last Thursday before the holidays feeling excited despite his tiredness. His excitement vanished, however, when Gilderoy Lockhart walked onto the stage. His attitude towards the Defence professor hadn't improved and he almost left to go to bed, but then Lockhart introduced Snape as his assistant. The idea of Snape fighting Lockhart was too good to miss.

He cheered with several other Slytherins when Snape blasted Lockhart off his feet with a Disarming Charm. When they were paired up to practice the spell themselves, Harry was put with Jia but neither of them managed it very well. Harry made her wand jiggle a little in her grip, but it didn't jump out of her hand nor knock her off her feet, and her attempt at the spell did nothing at all.

They were one of the few couples who actually attempted the Disarming Charm as ordered. Most people took that chance to instead throw all manner of hexes and curses at the other students. Lockhart called for them to stop and then, once everyone was cured of whatever maladies befell them, he looked around and said, "I think I better teach you how to _block_ unfriendly spells. How about a volunteer pair—Longbottom and Finch-Fletchley."

"A bad idea, Professor Lockhart," Snape countered with a sneer. "Longbottom causes devastation with the simplest of spells. We'll be sending Finch-Fletchley to the Hospital Wing in a matchbox. Might I suggest Malfoy and Weasley instead?"

Harry frowned as the rest of the Slytherins sniggered, noticing Neville going red and Hermione glaring angrily at Snape.

Ron and Malfoy got up on stage and faced each other. Lockhart demonstrated a Blocking Spell—or at least attempted to—then the boys got ready to duel. Lockhart counted down from three, but Malfoy was over-eager. On two he twirled his wand and shouted, " _Serpensortia!_ " and a long, black snake shot out the end.

Several people screamed. Ron squeaked like a frightened mouse and staggered away from the snake. The snake, apparently unhappy at being thrust out the end of a wand half its size, hissed and reared up, turning to the person nearest—a terrified Justin Finch-Fletchley.

" _Stop!_ "

Harry didn't even think about. He wasn't sure what made him do it, just that he saw the snake going for Justin and automatically ordered it not to despite knowing his Wish Magic wouldn't work. But the snake did stop and he wasn't sure who was more surprised—him or the rest of the students, who now all stared at him. It took a moment for him to realise that they didn't look impressed or, as he'd expect from Justin, grateful, but instead they were afraid and suspicious.

Amidst his tiredness and confusion, Harry had the sudden thought that this was why Dumbledore had cuffed him. People were afraid of power. All he'd done was stop a snake attacking someone, yet they were already scared of him. How afraid would they be if they knew the full extent of his power?

Snape stepped forward, vanished the snake with a wave of his wand, and stepped off the stage to stalk over to Harry, grabbing him by the shoulder.

"My office. Now."

The rest of the students parted like the red sea as the two walked out. Harry looked around and caught Hermione's gaze, and to his despair even she looked almost afraid.

Snape pushed him into a chair when they reached his office and stood on the other side of his desk, looking down at Harry with arms folded over his chest.

"Would you care to explain what just happened?"

"With the snake? I just told it to stop. I guess Dumbledore's cuffs aren't working properly anymore."

"The snake did not stop because of your Wish Magic; it stopped because you spoke to it in Parseltongue."

Heavy understanding settled in Harry's stomach and he didn't refute it. It made sense. The cuffs had shown no sign of fading power and even now he could do none of his Wish Magic, not even the tiniest spell. It hadn't been magic that let him stop the snake, it had been language, and that was why everyone was afraid of him. He and Hermione read about Parseltongue while searching for information about the Chamber of Secrets and Salazar Slytherin. It was a famous skill of his, the reason the Slytherin house symbol was a snake, and widely considered a trait of dark wizards. Voldemort had spoke it, too. Now Harry had revealed to the entire school that he could speak it right when Slytherin's heir was terrorising the school.

He looked up at Snape. "I'm not the heir."

"I know, but you should prepare yourself for the worst from your fellow students," Snape warned him. "They won't be so trusting."

He wasn't wrong. When Harry got back to the common room, he was greeted by silence, everyone staring at him. Malfoy was the first to move, rising from his chair and stalking forwards to stand in front of Harry.

"You're _not_ the heir of Slytherin," he said furiously, and Harry felt a deep rush of relief and fondness for the boy

"No, I'm not."

"Good. I'm glad that's clear because the heir of Slytherin, whoever he is, is a respectful pureblood wizard, not some half blind half-blood who befriends Mudbloods and blood traitors."

And the fondness died as quickly as it came. "I might not be the heir, but if you call Hermione that again then I'll be the one conjuring snakes and setting them on _you_."

Malfoy just sneered, and Harry stalked off to his dorm. He paused in the doorway. Tyler and Cid were there and they both looked at him, Cid unsure and Tyler with open hostility.

"I'm not the heir of Slytherin," Harry blurted, and Tyler scoffed.

"Excuse me if I don't believe _that_."

* * *

Harry was now even more glad the next day was the last day of term. Cid was siding with Tyler and Jia was ignoring him. Malfoy might believe Harry's innocence, and so it seemed did a few other Slytherins, but they were the only ones. Even Hermione and Neville didn't believe him when he tried to talk to them at lunch.

He heard the hissing voice again during Charms class, the one talking about killing that he'd heard way back at the start of term. He dropped his quill and jerked his head up, looking around, but the class was silent, everyone bent over bits of parchment as they answered the questions on the board. Harry picked up his quill again, ignoring the weird look Cid gave him. Maybe he really was going mad.

The seizure happened ten minutes before the end of Charms, the first convulsive seizure he'd had all term, and it came without warning. Flitwick sent Jia to fetch Madam Pomfrey, but just around the corner from the classroom she found Justin Finch-Fletchley and Nearly Headless Nick petrified.

Flitwick took Harry into the Hospital Wing at the same time Justin and Sir Nicholas were taken in, but he placed Harry on a bed and then left him there. Madam Pomfrey was so busy examining Justin and Sir Nicholas that she didn't notice he hadn't woken up until it was almost dinner time. When he didn't respond to her attempts to wake him, she tried using _rennervate_ , but when that didn't work either she realised something was seriously wrong.


	6. Chapter 6

**AN:** This chapter makes ample use of bold/italic font. If you prefer to read it without, please go to my Archive Of Our Own page, which uses a workskin to display the text in different fonts. You can search my username on AO3 or simply paste this on the end of the base AO3 url: works/14815872/chapters/34631244

 **Chapter 6**

Madam Pomfrey spent an entire stress filled night and half the next day trying to figure out what was wrong with Harry before calling in Kirith Karpel for help. She might have put it off for longer, but in just those eighteen hours Harry had already stopped breathing and required resuscitation twice.

Aside from the petrified victims, Harry was the only patient in the Hospital Wing and the majority of students had gone home for the holidays, so they didn't have to worry about nosy students trying to find out what was happening. As Kirith spent an hour closely examining Harry, only Pomfrey, Dumbledore, and Snape were there to watch. Pomfrey stood close, ready to help if necessary or fetch anything Kirith might need. Dumbledore stood patiently just out of the way, and Snape paced restlessly.

"Well?" the head of Slytherin demanded when Kirith finally straightened up. "What's wrong with him?"

"I don't know—"

"Then find someone who does!"

"Severus, calm yourself," Dumbledore ordered, and Snape whirled on him, jabbing a finger at Harry's bed.

"That boy is _dying_ and no one can figure out why," he snarled. "Don't tell me to calm down."

"If you would let me finish," Kirith said loudly, drawing their attention back to her, "I don't know what's wrong with him, but I have an idea. It's not neurological or dark magic related, so I need to call a colleague for a consultation. If you'll excuse me a moment…"

She went to Pomfrey's office to use the floo. Snape resumed pacing.

"We'll find out what's wrong with him," Dumbledore said quietly but firmly. "He will not die."

Kirith soon returned with a tall, male healer with the physique of a rugby player, introducing him as Andrew Hopkins. Hopkins was stunned to see Harry's scar—his Concealing Charm had long since faded and no one had put it back on—but he agreed to keep it secret and started to examine Harry. It took less than ten minutes before he straightened up and asked, "The rune magic on these cuffs—it's magic suppression, correct?"

Dumbledore nodded.

"They're killing him," Hopkins said bluntly. "They need removing right now."

Snape whirled on Dumbledore, face furious. Dumbledore ignored him, stepping up to the bed and tapping his wand to each of the cuffs on Harry's wrists.

Every window, water jug, and drinking cup in the Hospital Wing smashed, filling the room with the roaring sound of breaking glass. Only when the noise settled, wind and snow blowing through the open windows, did they realise a swarm of butterflies fluttered about overhead and every piece of furniture in the room hovered inches off the floor.

"What on earth…?" Pomfrey gasped.

"This is Harry's doing, I believe," Dumbledore answered, waving his wand to repair the windows.

Hopkins nodded. "His magical power is immense and his magic is just pouring out of him. I imagine he's got an instinctive control over it, way beyond anyone else of his age, even without training? Well, when you put those cuffs on him," he continued when Dumbledore nodded, "it didn't stop his power, it just restricted his access."

"That was the intention," Dumbledore murmured. "To lessen it to a more normal level."

Hopkins shook his head. "But you can't do that for extended periods of time. Magic isn't stationary, you have to understand. It's not dormant within us. It's why we so strongly encourage Muggleborns to get formal training and why Obscurials occur. When you restrain magic, it builds up inside a person. On a normal adult—I wouldn't guess for an average teenager—it might take years, even a decade or more, for it to reach this level, but for someone of Mr Evans' power, it quickly became too much. His body couldn't handle the amount of magic within him and so it began shutting down. This," he said, gesturing to the floating beds and butterflies, "is his magic finally releasing itself. It might be a little while before it settles down."

Pomfrey had gone to check the petrified victims while Hopkins talked, checking they hadn't been harmed by the flying glass and attempting to push down the beds, especially the one for Nearly Headless Nick, who hadn't moved with his bed. Unfortunately it resisted her efforts and the poor ghost was stuck until the bed lowered itself. She returned to the group and, having listened to Hopkins explanation, asked, "Why didn't it make him an Obscurial? I know it occurs mostly in younger children, but there have been instances of people up to their mid-teens."

"Obscurials are as much a result of psychological restraints as physical. They occur over a number of years and build on a young wizard's emotions, especially negative. If those restraints had been put on Mr Evans when he was younger, or if he wasn't so powerful and the magic took longer to build up inside him to this degree, he may have become one. We're all fortunate that didn't happen."

"Especially poor Harry," Pomfrey murmured.

Hopkins and Kirith left soon after and Pomfrey gave Harry one last general examination before retiring to her office, leaving Snape and Dumbledore standing over the still sleeping Harry.

Snape spoke in a quietly furious voice, the kind that terrified his students, and didn't look at Dumbledore, unsure he could control himself if he did.

"When he wakes up, _you_ can tell him who's responsible for his nearly dying."

Then he whirled on his heel and stalked out.

* * *

It took an entire day for the beds to settle down and another for the butterflies to disappear and Harry to wake up. Pomfrey checked him over and gave him some water then informed Dumbledore and Snape. Snape didn't come to see him, but Dumbledore did. Harry didn't give him time to talk.

Harry didn't think himself a bad person. Bad people, he reasoned, did bad things.

Turning Dumbledore into a slug wasn't a bad thing, as long as he intended to turn him back. Which he did.

Putting a circle of salt around Dumbledore the Slug wasn't a bad thing either, because Dumbledore was intelligent and would know, even as slug, not to touch the salt.

And holding the pot of salt over Dumbledore the Slug for a long minute wasn't a bad thing, because he didn't actually overturn it, even if he came close.

He turned Dumbledore back after a day, ignoring pleading and threats of detention and point loss from McGonagall that he do it immediately. Dumbledore stood up, slime on his robes, and Harry didn't give him time to speak.

"Unless you need to speak to me as headmaster to student, stay the hell away from me."

"I will not interfere with you again, Harry," Dumbledore promised him solemnly, "but rest assured that if you use your magic against people as you did against me, I will have you expelled and, if necessary, arrested."

"I'll only use it on people who deserve it. If someone hurts me, or tries to do something like you did, I will defend myself."

Dumbledore considered him for a moment and then nodded. "I am sorry, Harry, for causing you such harm."

Madam Pomfrey kept him in for another day and he spent it exercising his magic, conjuring things, turning himself invisible, transfiguring anything within his reach. He could keep his scar hidden without having to rely on the Concealing Charm, which he was glad about; he didn't have to worry about forgetting to put it on in the mornings. It felt good to have his Wish Magic back.

He was released after lunch the day after waking up, and Hermione and Neville greeted him outside the Hospital Wing. Hermione hugged him and smiled widely.

"I'm so glad you're alright. No one would tell us what was wrong with you. They just said there were some complications after your last seizure."

"It was Dumbledore's cuffs. My body couldn't handle having my magic suppressed. I'm surprised you're here though," he couldn't help saying, unable to hide the bitterness from his voice. "Aren't you scared I'll set Slytherin's monster on you?"

Hermione bit her lip and wrung her hands and Neville looked guilty.

"We're sorry," he said. "We should have believed you when you said you weren't the heir."

"What made you change your minds?"

"Don't you know?" Hermione asked, surprised. "Justin and Nearly Headless Nick were petrified."

"I know, but why would that convince you?"

"It happened while you were in class. Flitwick and your whole class are witnesses that you were there when it happened, and they say you had your seizure right before they were found. It couldn't have been you."

They offered to hang out with him, but he'd spent several days being cleaned by charms and wanted a proper wash, so he headed back down to Slytherin, where he had the first year dorm to himself as all the others had left for the holiday. Shortly after he arrived, Malfoy barged in without knocking, looking him over critically.

"I heard you died, Evans."

"You wish, Malfoy."

"What was wrong with you?"

"Complications from my seizure."

"Really."

Harry straightened up from where he'd shoved his wash things into his bag, intending to go up to the Room of Requirement for a bath. He hadn't had a proper clean in several days and now that he was used to regular washings, he noticed how unpleasant it was to only be cleaned with charms.

"Yes. Really."

"Because some people think you just wore yourself out with whatever dark magic you used to petrify Finch-Fletchley and the ghost from afar."

"I thought you didn't believe I'm the heir of Slytherin."

"I don't," he said, but he didn't sound as certain as he had the night of the Duelling Club. "The real heir is a pureblood, and they'd ask _me_ for help."

"With what, their press campaign?"

Malfoy's cheeks went pink. "Shut up, Evans. I wish you had died."

"I wish _you_ died. Piss off, Malfoy."

* * *

On Christmas, Harry woke up to a small pile of presents at the end of his bed. He found one from Dumbledore and almost vanished it, but the note on front made him stop.

 _Your father left this in my possession before he died. I hope you will find some use for it regardless of your power. – A. Dumbledore._

He didn't care that it came from Dumbledore when what was inside used to be his father's. He didn't even care that he could turn invisible without the use of an Invisibility Cloak. It could be a dirty sock for all he cared; the fact that he now owned something that used to belong to his dad was more important than anything else.

He opened the rest. He got a luxury eagle-feather quill from Hermione and an accompanying jar of colour-changing ink from Neville, an extra large box of Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans from Tyler, a fancy notebook from Jia (who repeatedly told him he needed to take more notes in class), and from Cid he got a rubber duck that would quack rude words if the water got too cold. He assumed that the gifts from his friends meant they weren't among those who still thought he was the heir of Slytherin.

He ate lunch with Logan Sparrow, a third year who was also the only one of his year group to stay for the holiday, and a few fifth years. He pulled crackers with them and exchanged some small talk, but they weren't eager to involve a little first year much. Harry didn't mind as long as it meant he didn't have to sit with Malfoy and the other second years.

Once he'd eaten, he left the Slytherin table to move over to the Gryffindor one and say hi to Hermione and Neville.

"You want to hang out?" he asked them when they'd finished their own meals.

Neville looked at Hermione then down at his lap. Hermione straightened the cutlery on her plate.

"Oh, um… sorry, Harry, actually we were going to… just go back to Gryffindor."

He looked between them. Neville wouldn't meet his gaze. Hermione held it too firmly.

"Right," he said coolly. "I guess I'll see you around then."

He stood and Neville looked up, opened his mouth, and shut it again without saying anything. Hermione bit her lip but also didn't speak. Harry stalked away. So they didn't want to hang out with him. Fine.

No, actually, it wasn't fine. His two oldest friends, his first friends, were leaving him out. Abandoning him. Did they still think he was the heir of Slytherin and only lied earlier for some unknown reason? Had his near death scared them into pretending to be nice for a bit, but now they'd had time to think about it they realised they really did think he would attack his fellow students?

Or did they not want to hang around him now he had his Wish Magic back again? Hermione had expressed envy over it before, when they went to save the Philosopher's Stone: _'If we weren't currently breaking about fifty school rules and trying to save a powerful magical object from the darkest wizard in history, I might be annoyed at how easily you do everything.'_

They weren't breaking school rules and saving magical objects now. Maybe she decided she didn't want to be friends with someone who had the power he did.

He started towards the dungeons then changed his mind, checked the entrance hall was empty, Wished himself invisible, and headed up to Gryffindor instead. He would sneak into their dorms and do something—stick their furniture to the ceiling or fill them with balloons that would give off a rotten scent when exploded or something. He could do it from afar, but he wanted to get a look at the layout, to figure out what the best way to work things was.

His route up took him past the Room of Requirement, and he was surprised to pass it and find Ginny Weasley standing in the corridor. The Slytherin and Gryffindor first years didn't share any classes so he'd never had cause to interact with her, but he stopped now to look at her. She was pale and sweaty, obviously ill, and clutched a thin, shabby black book to her chest, trembling slightly. Her eyes were squeezed shut and her mouth was moving, but he couldn't hear what she was saying until he got closer.

"I won't write it in, I won't write to him, I won't, I won't, I won't."

He wondered who 'him' was. Perhaps she was just mad. She had to put up with all her brothers, after all, and Harry heard that there were two more who'd already left Hogwarts. Harry would go mad if he had that many siblings.

Ginny spun and started walking away, towards Gryffindor, but then stopped and turned back, stalking the other way.

"I'll hide it," she said to herself, speaking a little louder now but with less confidence. She got past the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy, stopped, waited a few seconds, then turned and walked the other way again. "No, no, I can't—but I have to…"

Harry watched her do this several times, growing more convinced that she was mad, until her pacing finally caused the Room of Requirement to manifest. Ginny jumped at the appearance of the door, but finally stopped pacing. She looked up and down the corridor, looked at the door uncertainly, and reached for it. She paused just before grabbing the handle, fingers twitching unsurely, then twisted it and stepped inside. She gasped.

Harry moved up behind her and gaped. He'd conjured a few elaborate rooms in his time, just testing out the Room's abilities, but never anything like this. It was the size of a cathedral and filled almost to bursting with all kinds of objects—haphazardly piled broken and badly-charmed furniture, entire mountain ranges of books, numerous toys both familiar and strange to him. It looked as if people had been using the room to discard all manner of things for centuries.

Maybe they had, he realised. He could hardly be the only student to have found the Room of Requirement, and how many had discovered this place accidentally? Pacing in panic like Ginny and gifted with a place to hide their forbidden and unwanted belongings.

He followed Ginny inside. She moved slowly at first, staring around her in astonishment, and then a smile spread over her face.

"Yes," she whispered to herself, hugging the book tightly and then thrusting it away from her. "This is perfect."

She moved just a little further in, looked around a bit, then stretched her arm backwards, clearly intending to throw the book as far as she possibly could. She started to swing—and then stopped. Her grim smile faded and she looked at the book, turning even paler.

"No, I—"

She whimpered, hugged the book, and for a moment looked like she might cry.

Then she thrust her arms out and threw the book away. Not a large, overarm throw like she planned before, just an abrupt, urgent need to get it out of her hands. Even before it hit the floor, she spun around and ran out the room.

Harry picked the book up, curious as to what could have made her act so strange. He thought it must contain something outrageous to make her so torn on getting rid of it, but it was just an old, empty diary. It wasn't even hers; the name inside read _T. M. Riddle_.

Maybe that was who she meant when she said she wouldn't write to 'him' anymore. There had to be _something_ special about this diary for her to act so odd, he thought, thumbing through the pages. One page caught him, slashing a papercut deep enough to draw blood, and he yanked back with a hiss of pain and stuck his thumb in his mouth. Maybe it was enchanted to give everyone papercuts, he thought bitterly. Or perhaps it replied to whoever wrote in it with insults or explicit comments or something.

He pocketed it to try out later, then spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the room, forgetting about his revenge on Hermione and Neville as he dug through the piles for anything interesting looking. He found a torn and graffitied bag that he fixed with a Wish and enlarged on the inside so he could stuff it full of interesting looking books, and by the time he headed for the exit he felt quite cheerful.

The door opened just as he reached for it and he had to leap backwards to avoid getting walked into as Ginny Weasley entered the room again. He moved aside and she hurried over to the spot where she'd thrown the book, her face going pale once again when she saw it gone.

"Oh no…"

Harry debated taking out the book and putting it down somewhere she'd notice it on the way out, but he was too curious about it. He'd test it out himself, find out what was so interesting about it, and then maybe he'd give it back to her. She didn't even seem to know if she really wanted it.

She looked around for several minutes, peering under and over some of the piles near the entrance, before finally deciding that the book was definitely gone. Harry didn't leave in that time; he didn't want to draw attention by opening the door. Ginny stood by it for another moment even after finishing her search, wringing her hands, then she turned away.

"It's gone," she said, sounding like she was trying to convince herself that was a good thing. "It's gone. I don't need it… oh, I hope he doesn't tell anyone else what I did…"

She looked back once more, shook her head, and left. Harry waited a full minute to be sure she wasn't lingering in the hall outside, then left as well.

Back down in Slytherin, he dumped his new bag of books by his trunk, made himself visible again, and sat on his bed to examine the diary. He took out the quill Hermione gave him for Christmas—not thinking about her recent betrayal of friendship—filled it with ink, opened the diary up to the first page and wrote.

 **Hello.**

A few heartbeats passed, and then someone else's writing appeared.

 _Who are you?_

 **My name's Harry Evans. Are you T. Riddle?**

 _How did you get this book, Harry?_

 **Ginny Weasley threw it away. What's your first name?**

 _How unkind of her. And you haven't returned me?_

 **She didn't seem to want you. It's not like she dropped you accidentally and I just found you. Why'd she throw you away?**

 _She is a difficult child. She has many problems. I have been trying to help her, but she fails to see the wisdom I provide. It would be best if you returned me to her._

 **You help her? How?**

 _That's not really any of your concern, Harry._

 **I'm not surprised she threw you away if you're like this with her. How can you help anyone when you're so callous?**

 _Coddling doesn't help everyone. Some people need a firm hand._

 **My uncle used to say that.**

 _Did he? How interesting._

Harry frowned down at the diary. T. Riddle was a bit of a jerk.

But then more writing came, unprompted.

 _Tell me more._

 **Was that sarcasm?**

 _Not at all. I genuinely wish to know more. There's something interesting about you, Harry. I can just feel it._

 **You're a book, you can't feel anything.**

 _It was a turn of phrase. It's in your writing._

 **How do you decide there's something interesting in my writing?**

 _It's what I do. I can determine a lot from a person's writing. I can sense their troubles. Tell me about yours. Tell me about this uncle who used to speak of a firm hand._

Harry hesitated, unsure about that. Was the diary really that interested in his uncle? Why would it care? Unless it was telling the truth. Maybe it really did sense people's troubles. Maybe it was some kind of psychic therapy journal that people wrote in to work through their issues. Ginny certainly appeared to need therapy, and the book's earlier attitude might have been influenced by her. It was probably meant to attune itself to the writer's needs and the more Harry wrote in it, the more it would attune itself to him and change its tone.

That made him more hesitant. Something like this, it probably wasn't meant to be shared. If he wrote in it, it might mess it up for Ginny. He should probably just give it back…

 _Harry? I really would like to know more about you. My name's Tom. Please, tell me all about yourself._

 **Shouldn't I give you back to Ginny?**

 _What for? She threw me away, remember._

 **She came looking for you again afterwards.**

 _Did she really?_

 **Yes.**

 _And still you kept me? That speaks to you, Harry. This diary latches onto those who need it most._

 **I don't need therapy.**

 _I never mentioned therapy. Why would you say that?_

 **But isn't that what you are? A diary enchanted to help people with their issues like a therapist.**

 _I'm an enchanted diary, but not one tailored to helping people._

 **You said you helped Ginny.**

 _She wanted my help. If you do not, then I can be simply a companion._

 **If she wanted your help then I should give you back.**

 _Do not. Ginny Weasley doesn't need my help. She's a whiny little girl who thinks that having a lot of brothers and an overbearing mother means she is entitled to attention. She did not even purchase me; she discovered me and kept me, just like you did. Why do you think it's not her name in the front?_

 **Then I should find your real owner.**

 _Have you not paid attention to the dates on this diary, Harry? My original owner abandoned me a long time ago._

 **Do you care? You don't care that Ginny left you.**

 _Ginny was a boring little girl. My original owner was not. He betrayed me, but they say time heals all wounds. I have you now. You will be much more interesting than insipid little Ginny._

 **You can't know that. I might be even more horribly boring than her. I don't have lots of brothers to complain about.**

 _I know. I know you are far more interesting, Harry Evans. The half-blind Slytherin orphan that speaks Parseltongue._

 **How do you know all that?**

 _Ginny is quite the little gossip. She told me a great deal about everyone and it was very tedious to read the whinings of an eleven year old girl. You were by far the most interesting person she mentioned. Tell me more about yourself. Do you live with the uncle you mentioned?_

 **No.**

Harry stopped. He hadn't meant to write that, had just answered before he really thought about it. Still, what harm was there really?

 _But you've spent enough time with him to know he believes in the metaphorical firm hand._

Harry hesitated to answer and after a few indecisive moments, Riddle wrote again.

 _Perhaps the physical one, too._

Harry shut the diary and shoved it in the bag with his other books. A glance at the clock showed dinner would be served soon, so he got up and left, trying to put the diary out of his mind.

He avoided looking over at the Gryffindor table when he reached the Great Hall, sitting with his back to it, but he knew Hermione wasn't there because Malfoy commented on it.

"Maybe the heir of Slytherin finally got her," he said gleefully. "One more Mudblood down. I hope it killed her."

Harry quietly Wished for Malfoy's food to go cold and his juice sour. He might be angry at Hermione and Neville, but he still didn't want them dead or petrified, and he didn't like hearing Malfoy say that.

He ate quickly and left the table, wanting to get back to Slytherin to examine his new collection of books and feeling grumpy again now he was reminded of Hermione and Neville. He just reached the entrance to the dungeons when—

"Harry!"

He briefly considered ignoring it, but stopped and turned, affecting an expression of cool disinterest.

"What do you want?" he asked Neville.

"I wanted to explain about earlier."

"Explain what? You don't want to be friends anymore, I get it."

"That's not true!" Neville cried, wringing his hands and looking miserable. "Please, Harry, that's not true at all. Let me explain."

Harry folded his arms over his chest. "Explain then."

Neville looked around. A few other students were coming out of the Great Hall. "Can we go somewhere private?"

Harry almost said no, but then nodded. If Neville's explanation was rubbish, Harry could make a revenge Wish without being seen.

They found a classroom and shut the door, and Neville launched into a story about spending the last few months brewing Polyjuice Potion; how he and Hermione had stolen ingredients from Snape, brewed the potion in secret in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, and then this afternoon it was ready and they'd taken it using hairs from Gregory Goyle and Millicent Bulstrode, intending to sneak into the Slytherin common room and interrogate Malfoy about the Chamber of Secrets.

"Only the hairs Hermione got from Bulstrode weren't hers," Neville finished. "They were cat hairs and you're not supposed to use animal hair in Polyjuice so now she's in the hospital wing covered with fur and cat ears and a tail and everything."

Harry's anger at them softened with the explanation, to incredulity and bitterness at being left out, but at that he just burst into laughter.

"Don't laugh, it's awful!" Neville said, and Harry just laughed harder. "It might takes weeks for Madam Pomfrey to fix her."

"But she'll get fixed?"

"Eventually."

"Then it's hilarious," Harry told him, and bent over, clutching his stomach with a fresh wave of laughter.

When he could finally speak properly through the giggles, he said, "You should have let me join in. I could have snuck you into the common room easily."

"You didn't have your Wish Magic when we started brewing."

"But I have it now. You could have told me earlier. Why'd you leave me out?"

"I don't know, I'm sorry," Neville apologised sincerely, looking so genuinely miserable that Harry forgave him. "We should have."

"I guess getting turned into a cat person is punishment for it," Harry said, and Neville nodded. "Can we visit her?"

"Madam Pomfrey let me, but Hermione'll hex you if you go there and start laughing at her."

Harry sniggered. "Probably best if I don't visit then."

"Do you want to hang out still?"

Harry thought about saying no, just as payback, but it was Christmas and he'd spent most of the day alone. "Alright."

With his Wish Magic back, Harry converted a classroom into his old sitting room. Neville fetched a Gobstones kit from his dorm and they played until curfew. It was nice, and he forgot about Tom Riddle and his diary for a few hours.

When he finally got back to Slytherin, he took the diary from the bag and opened it, but all the writing from earlier had vanished now. He closed it again, put it away, and went to bed.

* * *

On the morning of the twenty-eighth, Snape accompanied Harry through the floo to Saint Mungo's. Harry had his backpack with him with a few changes of clothes, Kiwi, and a couple of books to keep him entertained for the next few days. Kirith greeted them at the fireplace and showed them up to the room where the extended MEEG would be performed, and then Snape left with a curt goodbye.

Harry left his bag in the room and they went to do the MRI. He had to drink a sour tasting potion then lay still on a flat bed while Kirith cast a complex spell on his head. The bed was then pushed into a giant, clear doughnut-shaped machine filled with water and seven different coloured crystals. Kirith stepped away and cast another spell, simpler this time, and the water in the machine started to swirl, gradually moving faster and faster, the crystals inside glowing until he was surrounded by a whooshing blur of light. It was slightly hypnotic and he relaxed, just watching the blur of colours above him. He knew that it would project an image of his brain onto the wall for Kirith to examine, but he wasn't allowed to move so he couldn't twist to see it.

After, she took him back to the overnight room and set him up for the MEEG, casting the spell on his head and the one on the special quill, then he was left to himself. There was a rec room down the hall with a chess set, Gobstones kit, exploding snap cards, and some books. There were a couple of other people on the ward, but no one he wanted to interact with, just twin girls of about six years old who stared at him until he decided to go back to his room.

He'd packed books, some of the new ones he'd found in the Room of Requirement, but when he opened his bag to dig one out he was surprised to also find Tom Riddle's diary. He didn't remember packing that. He took it out, flicking through the blank pages, then put it back and pulled out a copy of _The Stan_ _dard Book of Spells (Grade 6)_ instead. Most of the spells in it were far too advanced for anyone his age, but that didn't bother him so he'd picked it up figuring it would save him having to buy a copy when he did reach sixth year. Even though he now had an entire vault full of gold, old habits left him with sticky fingers and it wasn't like anyone would be looking for this particular book.

He was annoyed to find that the previous owner, a B. Black, had written all over the book, then disturbed as he read the notes they left. B. Black seemed intent on turning the most harmless spell into something offensive, giving ways to turn even household charms into attack spells, usually with a suggestion of trying it on Muggleborns.

He put it aside with disgust after a while, deciding he would buy his own copy after all and throw this one in a fire. It was lunch by then and he ate, then had a chat with Kirith to see how he was doing. After that, he reached for another book and once again found himself taking out Riddle's diary. He looked at it for a moment, then sighed and went to find a quill and some ink before returning to his room and opening the diary.

 **Hello.**

The answer came almost immediately.

 _Hello, Harry. You've finally decided to write to me again. I knew you would._

 **I don't have much else to do right now.**

 _Ah, so I'm a last resort for the bored, am I? You wound me._

 **Do you actually have feelings?**

 _Of course._

 **Oh. Sorry then.**

 _Once more with feeling, Harry._

 **Sorry.**

 _Quite alright. Tell me what you're up to. It's the winter break, isn't it?_

 **Yeah.**

 _Have you gone home?_

 **No. I'm at St Mungo's hospital.**

 _Are you ill?_

 **I have epilepsy. They did an MRI and now I'm doing an extended MEEG for it.**

 _MRI? MEEG?_

 **Magnetic Reso-something Image and a Magielectro-something or other. I don't know how to spell it. The MRI involves this big machine with lots of spinning coloured crystals that made a picture of my brain. The MEEG puts a spell on my head and on a special quill and it marks out lines that apparently tell the healers what's happening in my brain. I don't really get how it works but it's supposed to tell them about the epilepsy.**

 _I see. How unfortunate for you. Half-blind and brain damaged. Is there anything else wrong with you?_

Harry scowled at that, not liking Riddle's tone, but answered.

 **No. I'm not brain damaged. Epilepsy is a brain DISORDER.**

 _Is that so. Are you on a ward right now?_

 **I have my own private room but there's a rec room as well to spend time with the other patients.**

 _Are there many?_

 **Just two girls. They're 6yo twins and they kept staring at me. It was creepy.**

 _What about healers? Are there many about?_

 **Not really. Just the ward healer. She's sat at her desk doing paperwork or something. Why are you asking about that?**

 _I am making conversation. You're bored and it's just the two of us. We may as well talk. Write to me._

 **About what?**

 _Who do you live with when you're not at Hogwarts?_

 **No one.**

 _You expect me to believe an eleven year old lives alone? Why so reluctant to tell me, Harry?_

 **I'm 12.**

 _My apologies. When was your birthday?_

 **31st July.**

 _Ginny said you're a first year. If you turned twelve in July, you should be a year above her, unless they changed the admission dates._

 **I started Hogwarts late.**

 _How curious. Why?_

Harry tapped the quill feather against his thigh, but there was no reason to lie to a diary. As long as he didn't let anyone else get their hands on it then Riddle couldn't tell anyone about him. If he did decide to stop using it and get rid of it, he'd do a better job than Ginny had.

He put the quill to page again.

 **I wasn't lying about living alone. I ran away from my aunt and uncle's when I was 7 and was living on the street. I was invisible most of the time and the Hogwarts letter couldn't find me to deliver it but I read about how to get there so I snuck onto the train and I spent what was meant to be my first year hiding at the school. Some stuff happened last June and the headmaster found me and he said I could join as a proper student but I had to do it as a first year.**

 _That's quite the story._

 **It's true.**

 _How does a seven year old keep himself invisible? The Hogwarts letter system isn't dependant on a child being visible._

 **I can make myself completely undetectable so not even any spells can find me. The headmaster checked it when he found out about me.**

 _How? That's power beyond even the greatest wizards. How could a child do that?_

Harry hesitated again, but here was a chance to admit something he'd never admitted to anyone. He'd been keeping secrets for years, only confessing bits and pieces to people, but he'd never told anyone the whole truth and never revealed his demon deal to anyone. Now he had a chance to do it without fear of recrimination. Riddle might say something rude, but as long as Harry kept the diary hidden or destroyed it then he could never reveal the secret to anyone else.

He leant forwards on the bed, peering out into the hallway to see if any of the healers were coming to check on him, then sat back and wrote.

 **Before I ran away, I made a deal with a demon. I asked it to make me the most powerful wizard in the whole world and it did.**

 _A demon deal? Those creatures deal in souls. You still have yours. This diary wouldn't connect to you if you didn't._

 **I keep it for 10 years. When I'm 17 hellhounds will come and kill me and the demons will take my soul to hell.**

 _You agreed to that when you were seven years old?_

 **I wasn't afraid. I'm still not. I had no choice. No one was going to help me so I had to do something to help myself.**

 _Help you with what?_

 **You were right about my uncle.**

 _He hit you._

 **He hated me. And my aunt. They would punish me for everything even if it wasn't my fault. My cousin would break things or steal biscuits and stuff and he'd blame me and my aunt and uncle would punish me for it. They used to make me sleep in a cupboard and even when they gave me a real bedroom they'd put me in the cupboard as punishment. I** **hated** **them.**

 _So you sold your soul to a demon._

 **I had to. My uncle nearly killed me one day. He got drunk and beat me up so bad I had to go to hospital. That's how I lost my sight in one eye. I had broken ribs and arm and I was bleeding inside. He told everyone a burglar did it and everyone believed him. I didn't want that to happen again.**

 _Did you never tell someone the truth?_

Harry didn't like to admit it, but—

 **I was scared. I was just a kid and my uncle was a big man and he always told people I was a liar. All my school teachers and the neighbours and everyone believed I was basically a criminal. I did tell one person. I told the headmaster when he found me hiding at Hogwarts.**

 _Headmaster Dumbledore? He knows about the deal you made?_

 **No just about my uncle. I told him I always had all this power.**

 _And what did he do about your uncle?_

 **He took me back.**

 _Somehow, I am not surprised. Everyone reveres him as a great and wonderful wizard, but at his heart he has a darkness._

 **He put these cuffs on me that stopped me doing magic as well.**

 _Are you joking?_

 **No. He forced them on me. I could still do magic with a wand, but I couldn't use my wish magic (that's what I call the power from the demon deal because I just make a wish and it comes true). They nearly killed me. I went into a coma just before Christmas and they had to call in two specialist healers to figure out what was wrong with me.**

 _That man should be fired. He should be_ _arrested_ _._

For the first time, Harry felt some genuine warmth towards Riddle. He was the only person Harry had ever heard say something bad about Dumbledore. He liked having someone agree with him.

 _You really are quite the remarkable young man, Harry. I would love to know more about you._

 **Like what?**

 _You mentioned Dumbledore finding you after an incident last June. What was it?_

 **Last years defence teacher was possessed by the spirit of a dark wizard called Voldemort and he tried to steal the philosophers stone. I stopped him but I passed out when we were fighting and D found me.**

Riddle's response to that was slow to come.

 _Ginny told me about that. She claims a person by the name of Harry Potter was responsible._

 **That's me. I changed my name to Evans after the demon deal but almost no one knows that I'm him because I don't want people to know that I'm famous. Did Ginny tell you about that?**

 _Yes, she did. It's quite the tale, the baby who defeated the greatest dark wizard to ever walk the earth. And you're him?_

 **Yes.**

 _How did you defeat Voldemort then? You didn't even have the power of a demon deal when you were a babe._

 **I don't know. D said it was because of some love protection from my mum. I don't know if that's true.**

 _Love protection?_

 **He didn't really explain it. But when V was in Quirrell (the teacher) it hurt him when I touched him. It burned his skin. D said it was because my mum left a protection on me.**

 _How curious. You should seek to find out more. You deserve to know the truth of that night. For now, tell me more. I want to know_ _everything_ _about you, Harry. You're proving to be more interesting than I could possibly have imagined._

With little else to do and feeling an unexpected comfort at revealing all his secrets to someone for the first time, Harry did.


	7. Chapter 7

**AN:** Once again this chapter makes use of bold/italic, and can be read on AO3 if you prefer to see it in different fonts.

 **Chapter 7**

The MEEG went on for two nights before Kirith decided it was enough, and it was very anti-climatic. Harry expected the two examinations to make Kirith come to some defining conclusion about what potion Harry needed to take and made it possible for him to get a new eye. Instead all Kirith said was that it confirmed the diagnosis of epilepsy, and that she wanted Harry to return to trying the original anticonvulsant potion because Healer Hopkins believed his suppressed magic likely interfered with the potion before.

"We can't cure epilepsy, we can only treat it," she reminded him when he complained about wasting time with the MRI and MEEG, "and what works for some doesn't necessarily work for others. This proved epilepsy beyond a doubt and confirmed that there are no other problems. Now we just need to find the right potion to suppress the seizures."

* * *

With his Wish Magic back, Harry didn't use his wand at all during the holiday, so it wasn't until his first Charms lesson after term resumed that he discovered that using his wand with his Wish Magic was not a simple thing.

They were practising with fire spells, changing the temperature by degrees like they needed to for Potions, but when Harry conjured his fire it burst out of his wand like dragon breath. Classmates screamed. Jia's hair caught fire and their shared desk was almost turned to ash before Harry got it out. Harry apologised profusely, but Jia still refused to talk to him for the rest of the week. She fortunately wasn't actually hurt, she just had singed hair.

He used his evenings to practice his casting, in the Room of Requirement where he thought it would be safe. Everything he did with his wand was amplified now. That was fine for Transfiguration, but his Levitation Charm sent a table skyrocketing upwards so fast it smashed to pieces on contact with the ceiling, and his Lumos Spell was so bright he was still seeing white spots in his vision hours later, when Tyler approached him in the dormitory.

"Harry, can I ask you a favour?"

Laying on his bed, Harry didn't open his eyes to ask, "What is it?"

"You know my friend Alex? He's struggling with spell work and you're really good, so I was wondering if you could maybe tutor him a little? He needs to learn some hexes and curses."

Harry opened his eyes and looked up at Tyler, who'd slung an arm around one of Harry's bed posts. "Why hexes and curses?"

"So he can use them on those twats in Hufflepuff," Tyler said, scowling. "They've been picking on him, giving him shit for hanging out with a Slytherin. They're making him miserable."

"I don't think getting a detention for hexing people will make him happier."

"They'll stop picking on him if he stands up for himself though. It's about time he learned, he's always letting people walk all over him."

"Oh. Well, I don't think I'd be a very good teacher. My spells are a bit… unpredictable at the minute. I'm not sure I should be teaching anyone until I can control my own magic. Why not ask Ed Coleman in Ravenclaw? He's pretty good."

"Yeah, alright."

Harry quickly learnt to be a lot more careful to control his wand motions, keeping them small and slow, or he had to just not do them entirely. He could quite simply point his wand at something, mutter a spell without much intent, and it would still work perfectly. It was useful to know, but he wouldn't do it around other people. He wasn't sure his teachers would appreciate him casting with such half-hearted methods, and it would definitely draw questions about how he could do it.

He continued writing to Riddle over the next few weeks, telling him about his day and the people in the castle. He used to think that keeping a journal was a stupid thing to do, and he still sort of did but he felt almost compelled to write to Riddle. Even on days when absolutely nothing remarkable happened he'd still find himself shutting the curtains of his bed and opening the diary up. It was nice to have a confidante at the times he needed someone to complain to, though.

He started to feel ill towards the end of January, much to his irritation. He watched the Gryffindor/Ravenclaw Quidditch match completely huddled in his robes, scarf pulled tight around his head. Most people had suffered through colds last term, but it would be just his luck to come down ill now, instead. He wasn't sleeping well, either. It wasn't like last term where he was constantly tired no matter how much he slept; now he just had days where it felt like he wasn't sleeping properly, wasn't reaching that state of sleep where it was actually restful.

Slytherin's heir made no further appearances by the time Valentine's Day rolled around. With winter starting to fade, people's moods were rising, and they were drastically improved by the events of 14th February. Even those people that didn't like Valentine's Day were at least distracted from any thoughts of Slytherin's monster by Lockhart's celebrations.

They walked into the Great Hall that morning to find it decked out in reds and pinks, paper flowers blooming all over the place and heart-shaped confetti floating down from the ceiling. It was immediately obvious who the culprit was—Lockhart wore lurid pink robes and beamed around at everyone as he told them about his Valentine's festivities. He'd hired dwarfs to dress up as cupids and deliver cards and gifts to people, and suggested everyone get into the spirit of the day.

"Why not ask Professor Snape to show you how to whip up a Love Potion! And while you're at it, Professor Flitwick knows more about Entrancing Enchantments than any wizard I've ever met, the sly old dog!"

Harry was fairly certain that if anyone tried asking Snape for a love potion, they would get force-fed poison. Flitwick just buried his face in his hands. On Lockhart's other side, McGonagall looked as if she wanted to jab her wand into Lockhart's side and turn him into a flamingo. It wouldn't take much; he was already the right colour.

Harry never really gave much thought to Valentine's Day before, but he decided then that it was a holiday for crazy people. Still, he found some humour in the cupids and their gift-giving. Tyler got three cards, two boxes of chocolate, and four roses, all before lunch, much to Harry and Cid's amusement. Tyler wasn't so impressed, discarding them all with comments like, "Love is stupid anyway."

Harry was surprised to see that one of Tyler's cards was from a boy, a Ravenclaw in their year called Sebastian Calais, but Tyler just vanished the card with the same roll of his eyes as the ones from girls.

"Do you think he's actually gay," Cid asked at lunch, looking across at where Sebastian sat with his back to them at the next table, "or just hasn't realised you're a boy?"

"Shut up," Tyler snapped, stabbing his salad with a fork. "God, I can't wait for my voice to break."

"If it bothers you that much, why don't you cut your hair? That might make you look more boyish."

"Because I look stupid with short hair."

Tabitha Sinclair, one of the Slytherin girls, wasn't impressed when she opened a card and found an animated picture of a realistic human heart inside. She pulled a face as she read it at lunch then threw it down the table at Cid.

"You're gross," she told him.

"Aww, c'mon. It's better than that sappy shit all the others have."

"Whatever. No one will ever be your girlfriend, loser."

She left with Jia and the other two girls, shooting filthy looks at Cid as they passed.

"Not like I want a girlfriend anyway," Cid muttered, but he looked disappointed.

Harry was extremely surprised—and even more embarrassed—to get a card himself when he was walking to Transfiguration that afternoon. He opened it with his cheeks flaming, Cid and Tyler peering over his shoulders and already mocking him. It was signed from a secret admirer, but Harry recognised the handwriting. He'd seen it often enough as Jia scribbled down notes next to him. When they reached class, he convinced Tyler to swap seats with him so he didn't have to sit next to her, and he rushed out as soon as class was over. He headed straight for the library, hoping that Hermione would be there as well and glad to walk in at almost exactly the same time as her.

"I need help," he told her desperately as they found a table to sit at.

"With what? Is everything alright?"

"I got a Valentine's card from Jia."

"Oh. Um… that's sweet."

"But what am I supposed to _do_?"

"Is it definitely from her?"

"She didn't sign it but I recognise her handwriting. Hermione, what if she wants to… to be my girlfriend or something?"

Hermione looked amused. Harry found the situation far from funny.

"Is that why you came to me? Because I'm a girl so I should know what you need to do?"

"Well… yeah. C'mon, Hermione, you're smart. You must have some advice."

"So are you, so figure it out yourself."

He glowered at her. She just smiled, patted his hand, and took out her homework. He huffed and left her to it, seeking out Neville instead. He didn't find him anywhere in the castle, but managed to catch him before dinner, pulling him aside before they entered the Great Hall and asking for his help instead.

Unfortunately, Neville just shrugged unhelpfully. "I've never had a Valentine's card. I don't know anything about that sort of thing. Maybe just ignore it?"

Harry groaned.

He ate dinner quickly, avoiding Jia—easy enough, as the girls were all sitting together and away from the boys—then hurried down to Slytherin and pulled out the journal. He felt a bit stupid talking to Riddle about something like this, but he didn't have anyone else to go to.

 **Do you know about girls?**

He realised how stupid that sounded as soon as he wrote it, but by then it was too late and the words were already sinking into the page.

 _I assume by that you mean do I know how to interact with them in a romantic capacity, rather than do I know they exist and are biologically different to boys._

Harry was glad a book couldn't tell he was blushing.

 **Yeah. It's Valentine's Day and my friend Jia sent me a card and I don't know what I'm supposed to do about it.**

 _Perhaps say thank you?_

 **But what if she wants to be my girlfriend?**

 _Would you like her to be?_

 **No. I like her as a friend but I don't want a girlfriend or anything.**

 _Then tell her that. But later. Talk to me more, Harry. I want your company tonight. Are you still feeling ill?_

 **A bit. I'm still not sleeping well. I bet this is a side effect from when Dumbledore put those cuffs on me. It better not have screwed up my sleep forever or I'm turning him into a slug for good.**

 _And give him a salt bath?_

 **YES.**

 _You would have my full support, Harry, but for now perhaps you should just rest. Go to bed early tonight._

 **I thought you wanted to talk.**

 _We can talk later. Lay down. Close your eyes. Let your mind drift, relax, open up to me._

* * *

He wasn't sure if he slept or had a seizure, or maybe both because the next thing he knew, he was in the common room with no idea how he got there, and all of Slytherin was in uproar.

"The fucker got Tyler!" Cid cried, genuine distress breaking his usual cocky bravado.

"Who got Tyler?" Harry asked, rubbing his eyes wearily. The clock said it was only just after nine o'clock in the evening.

"The heir of Slytherin."

Harry jerked his hands down and looked up, eyes wide, a chill running through him. "Is he…?"

"Petrified," Cid told him. "They found him in the bathroom nearest the Great Hall, right in front of a mirror. And they left another message—'Slytherin's heir will destroy all pretenders.' " Cid looked at him suspiciously. "Where were you all evening?"

Harry leapt up from his seat. "I didn't do this!"

"We're the only ones that knew he was half-blood by adoption."

"That Hufflepuff friend of his knows," Harry countered, clenching his fists. Everyone was watching them now, muttering and shooting Harry suspicious glares.

Cid scoffed. "As if Alex Stone is the heir of Slytherin. _He's_ not a Parselmouth, and he's not even a very good wizard."

"I'm not the heir!"

"Yeah, right. You did this! You attacked Tyler!"

He shoved Harry, who shoved him back. Harry opened his mouth to protest his innocence again, but Cid yanked out his wand and pointed it at him. Harry didn't give him chance to get off a spell, just thrust out his hand and Wished for the wand. It jerked out of Cid's grip and slammed into his palm.

People gasped.

"That was—!" "Did you see that?" "Wandless!"

"That's proof!" Cid cried, and a glance around showed that everyone in the common room agreed with him. "You're a dark wizard! You're the heir of Slytherin!"

Harry looked around, seeing people back away from him with obvious fear. Some of the older students drew their own wands and Harry let his instincts take over.

"Be calm!" he cried, panic driving the Wish from his mouth. "Everyone be calm. Do not believe that I am the heir of Slytherin. Forget you saw me disarm Cid wandlessly." He shoved the wand back into Cid's hand. "Forget we had this fight."

He'd never done anything like that before, but it worked exactly as he wanted. People looked a little confused and there were murmurs of "What are we doing?" but they put away their wands and started to discuss the attack on Tyler without accusations towards Harry.

Cid looked down at his wand, brow furrowing with confusion momentarily, then put it away and looked at Harry.

"Where were you this evening?" he asked again, but without accusation this time.

"Here," Harry answered, and hoped it was the truth because he really couldn't remember.

* * *

With this latest attack, some restrictions were put in place. All afternoon and evening clubs were moved to the Great Hall so they could be overlooked by the teachers, and anyone not in a club had to spend the time between classes and dinner, and between dinner and curfew, either in their common room or in the library. Students were absolutely forbidden to go anywhere without at least two other people and prefects did head counts every morning and evening.

Hagrid was arrested one evening. General consensus was that this was a good idea. Some people expressed doubts that the groundskeeper could be the heir of Slytherin, but there were fewer doubts that he was capable of violence against students.

"He was expelled as a student," revealed Cassius Warrington. "My father told me all about it. He wasn't a Slytherin and he can't possible be the heir, but he's using it as a cover."

"If he was expelled, shouldn't his wand have been snapped?" asked Jia.

Cassius nodded. "But there are plenty of dark creatures that can petrify people and Hagrid loves monsters."

Quidditch practices were overseen by Madam Hooch, and the Slytherin-Hufflepuff match was eagerly talked about. It would be a welcome distraction from the misery, a chance for them all to just get excited about something normal. Slytherin lost, which took them out of the running for the Quidditch cup. It would now be down to Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, who would play each other on the second weekend of May. Slytherin still had a match to play against Ravenclaw, at the end of May, but it would have no effect on the cup.

When the Easter break came at the end of March, almost everyone went home, even more than at Christmas. Because of it, the house elves converted a few unused classrooms on the ground floor into a temporary fifth house, so the teachers didn't have to worry about the six remaining students being spread all across the castle. Besides Harry, there was Logan Sparrow, a fellow Slytherin; Terry Boot, Elise Chambers, and Sarah Cashore from Ravenclaw; and Dennis Stebbins from Hufflepuff. They had two dorms—one for Elise and Sarah, and one for the boys—and two bathrooms, and a small shared common room. At meal times, they all sat at a single table with the teachers and it made the Great Hall feel so much larger.

It was an interesting way to spend the holidays. Harry found himself chatting with Dennis Stebbins quite a bit even though he was a third year. Dennis was a rabid Quidditch fan and Harry was the only other person even close to being as interested. Logan and Terry didn't care for it at all, and Sarah and Elise weren't interested enough to have lengthy in-depth discussions. Harry didn't mind, though he mostly just listened to Dennis talk. Harry liked Quidditch, but growing up as he did he never had the chance to learn as much about it as Dennis.

He only wrote to Riddle late at night, when he could be sure the others weren't going to see him. He didn't want anyone knowing he did anything so silly as keep a diary.

 **Did you ever play Quidditch? Oh wait you're a book that's a stupid question. Sorry.**

 _Do tell me you're not one of those empty headed fools that worship sports. I thought you were more intelligent than that._

 **I don't worship it but I do like it. I love flying and I really want to be able to play Quidditch.**

 _Why don't you?_

 **I can't. It's too dangerous with my seizures, and I can't really catch balls and stuff when I'm half blind. I hate my uncle for doing this to me. Sometimes**

 _Sometimes what?_

 **Sometimes I think maybe the purebloods are right and Muggles are bad.**

It wasn't something he ever really admitted, even to himself, but writing it now he knew it was true; however he was quick to add:

 **I don't hate Muggleborns but my aunt and uncle and cousin were all horrible and when I was on the streets there were Muggles who did bad things and sometimes I think maybe it's true that wizards are better. Does that make me a bad person?**

 _No, Harry, you're not a bad person. It's perfectly understandable that you'd feel this way after everything you've been through._

 **But it's not like there aren't bad wizards. Just look at Voldemort. Even Dumbledore.**

 _Of course there are bad wizards as well, but hating the people who hurt you doesn't make_ _you_ _a bad person. Distrust of Muggles isn't a terrible thing, Harry. You've studied our history, you've read about what they do to magical people._

 **But that was centuries ago. People are better now. They've evolved.**

 _Is your uncle amongst those who evolved?_

He closed the diary then, not because he disagreed, but because he didn't and that bothered him. Speaking against Muggles felt like a short step away from speaking against Muggleborns, and he didn't like that.

It was nice to have everyone back for the final term. The castle was a bit eerie when it was so empty, and Harry liked having his friends around again. He felt like he'd been under watch during the holiday, certain that Dumbledore was keeping an eye on him. He had remade his Wish that no one believe he was the heir of Slytherin, this time Wishing for everyone in the whole world to believe it, but he was still convinced that Dumbledore kept looking at him suspiciously. With the other students around, hopefully it would stop.

Three weeks passed. Harry still had problems with his sleep, and he was recording more seizures. He told himself it was just the stress of the school being terrorised by a monster and the approaching end of year exams, even though they were still a couple of months away. He'd never sat exams before and his results in them would determine whether he got to continue onto second year. If he failed, he would have to do first year all over again and that would be beyond embarrassing.

Then, on the morning of the Gryffindor-Hufflepuff Quidditch match, Harry lost himself. He knew, then, that this was more than just bad sleep and seizures and stress. He remembered writing in Riddle's diary the night before—

—and then it was almost mid-morning and Penelope Clearwater, a Ravenclaw sixth year prefect, was dead.

Harry sat in the common room with the rest of the students, knees pulled up to his chin, listening to Snape reading the new, even stricter rules. No clubs at all. All students escorted to classes and meals by the staff. A solid six o'clock curfew.

"It is probable," Snape added after, rolling up his parchment and looking around at them all with an unreadable expression, "that the school will be closed at the end of the year. Sooner, if anyone else is attacked within the next eight weeks. I understand if some of you wish to be withdrawn before then. I will provide an escort up to the Owlery after dinner this evening if anyone has letters to send home."

He swept out the room, and quiet conversation sprung up. Harry left his chair and fled for the dorms. Behind him, he heard someone say, "Do you think he's…?"

The door shut before he heard the end, but it didn't matter. He knew what they were wondering. He was wondering it himself.

Was he the heir of Slytherin?

He didn't know where he'd been that morning, didn't know what he'd been doing. He'd have thought, if he hadn't been around people, that his absence would have been noted.

Unless he Wished otherwise. It was possible. Almost anything was possible for him.

He felt sick.

* * *

That evening, Ginny Weasley sat down by Percy and told him about a diary she had in the first term, a diary that used to belong to T. M. Riddle. She told him how she used to write in it and it wrote back. She told him about the black spots in her memory, black spots that timed up exactly with the dates of the first attacks, but how she'd got rid of it during the Christmas break.

Percy took her straight to Professor McGonagall, where she repeated the story, staring at her feet with tears in her eyes. They spilled down her face when McGonagall said they had to see Professor Dumbledore, despite McGonagall's assurances that Ginny wouldn't be expelled. When Dumbledore repeated the assurance, she cried even harder, but from relief this time.

Dumbledore had Ginny show him to the place where the mystical room of hidden objects appeared and they managed to make it re-appear, then Dumbledore ordered McGonagall to take Ginny back to Gryffindor while he paced through the room, not looking for the diary because he knew it wasn't there. Someone else had it. Someone else had picked the book up and was now subject to Riddle's will. He hated that, but at least he knew it was still within the castle. As long as it was in the castle, it was within his reach.

Then Cornelius Fudge and Lucius Malfoy turned up.

* * *

Dumbledore's suspension only made the fear and tension throughout the school worse. Several students went home, their parents coming to pick them up late on Sunday or early Monday, but none of them Muggleborn, curiously. Harry wondered if the anti-Muggle enchantments on the castle made it harder for those parents to come fetch them, an unfortunate problem at a time like this. As it was, all the students who left were half-bloods.

Monday morning also brought a new notice for everyone. It was a simple one, but much talked about because no one understood why McGonagall, now acting headmistress, would be so concerned about something so trivial as a lost belonging at a time like this. Only to Harry did it make sense, and it made his blood run cold.

Lost diary labelled  
 **T. M. Riddle**  
If found, please return to  
Professor McGonagall  
IMMEDIATELY

Until that moment, Harry didn't think Riddle's diary had anything to do with the heir of Slytherin and his blackouts, but suddenly it all made sense. He'd found it after Christmas, and it was then that he started having trouble sleeping. The last thing he remembered doing before the attacks on Tyler and Penelope was writing it in.

He wasn't sure exactly what the connection was, but the diary had something to do with the attacks. Ginny must have been responsible for the first two, but she'd realised by herself the threat the diary presented. It was why she got rid of it, and now she'd told someone about it.

But he didn't hand it in. He couldn't. He thought about it, but his hand would freeze when he reached into his pocket for the diary. Something kept him from revealing it, something he couldn't quite control about himself, just like how Ginny had been so conflicted about getting rid of the diary at Christmas. She was stronger than him. Or maybe just less afraid. All she'd done was petrify people. Harry had killed someone. He couldn't admit to that. He'd be arrested, thrown in Azkaban. He'd read of the wizard prison and knew that he never wanted to get anywhere near a Dementor.

Despite Dumbledore's suspension and the near guarantee that the school would close at the end of term, exams were still set to go ahead. This was expected for OWL and NEWT students, but the other years complained loudly at having to sit through exams at such a strenuous time. Harry overheard Hermione one day saying she was glad.

"It's something _normal_ ," she told the other Gryffindors, who didn't care for normal if it meant they had to study still.

Harry didn't get chance to speak to her or Neville. With escorts in place, he never got chance to interact with them and library visits were scheduled by house, so he only ever passed them as Snape led the Slytherins into the library while McGonagall led the Gryffindors out.

He agreed with Hermione's sentiment, however. Focusing on studying for his exams made it a little easier to ignore the constant weight of the diary in his pocket. He hadn't written in it since Penelope's death, at least not consciously. He was afraid of what he did at night; sometimes he woke up in the morning and it wasn't exactly where he thought he'd left it. He stopped trying to sleep, then, and counted down the days to the end of term. He both dreaded and anticipated the day; Hogwarts would close and he would have nowhere to go, but at least the danger would be over and he couldn't hurt anyone else.

Three days before their exams, McGonagall stood up at breakfast to announce that the mandrakes were finally mature. Professor Sprout would harvest them that morning and then Snape would brew the restorative draught.

While the rest of the hall exploded with cheers, Harry forced a smile onto his face and tried to look pleased, but inside he was terrified. Tyler would wake up and reveal him as the culprit behind his attack, and subsequently the one on Penelope. Ginny seemed to have been forgiven for her part in things, but Harry knew he wouldn't be. How could anyone forgive him for killing a fellow student?

That fear made him finally write in the diary again. He did it during History of Magic, sitting at the back of the classroom and drawing the diary out while everyone else dozed in their seats, bored as always by Binns' lecture. The History teacher appeared to be the only person in the whole school not bothered by the fear, even though one of his fellow ghosts had been petrified.

 **What have you done to me?**

 _What are you talking about, Harry?_

 **The heir of Slytherin. You've got something to do with it.**

 _I'm just a diary, Harry. How could I possibly_

 **YOU DO. They're asking for you. A notice went up.**

 _What?_

 **Ginny Weasley must have told someone about you and now there's notices asking anyone to hand in the diary if they find it.**

 _That little bitch._

 **I'm going to hand you in.**

 _No, you won't._

 **I**

 _You will not hand me in, Harry. You will keep me hidden, as always._

 **Ye~ NO**

 **What are you doing**

 _You will do as I say. Tell me where you are._

 **History of**

 _You will not fight me, Harry. You cannot._

 **it's over. The mandrakes are ready. Prof Snape is brewing the restore potion right now. The schools going to shut down. Stop this.**

 _No. It's not over just yet._

 **What do you mean**

 _Don't worry, Harry. It's not over yet, but it will be soon. Make a Wish for no one to see you or to notice your absence._

 _Do it._

 **Yes.**

 _Make them completely overlook you and then leave the classroom._

 **Yes.**

 _Everything's going to be over soon. Trust me, Harry._

* * *

Filch found the message, scrawled in blood right below the first.

 _HIS SKELETON WILL LIE IN THE CHAMBER FOREVER._

Snape's face turned so white when he heard the news that Minerva thought the man who stood up to Lord Voldemort without batting an eyelash might now actually faint. He managed to snarl at Lockhart, sending the useless fop running from the staff room with his tail between his legs, but after Minerva gave instructions to everyone else and dismissed them, he remained in place, clutching the back of a chair.

"Severus, are you alright?"

"He's my son."

Snape's voice was hollow. Minerva had never heard him sound so hopelessly lost.

"Who's your son?"

"Evans. Harry. He's my son. Minerva, if he dies—"

He broke off, unable to continue. Minerva had no idea what to say to him.

* * *

Riddle bent over the semi-conscious body on the floor of the Chamber. Harry Evans was a small boy, physically unassuming and unthreatening. Both his green eyes were dull now, fading with every minute that Riddle drained the life from him.

And what a life it was! The boy was a powerhouse, stronger than anything Riddle's felt before, no doubt because of the demon deal.

But Riddle couldn't help feel disappointed in his older self. How could he, the most powerful sorcerer in the world, have been taken down by this mere child who hadn't even had _this_ power when Voldemort tried to kill him?

* * *

Minerva sat in her office, head in her hands and taking two minutes to just sit in quiet and try not to cry about the disaster that befell the school. She jumped when her fireplace flared and stared in astonishment when Dumbledore stepped out of the flames.

"Albus!"

"The students, they're still here?"

Minerva nodded. "The train leaves—"

"Fetch Ginny Weasley."

"What? Albus—"

"Minerva, please. We don't have time for questions. Fetch Miss Weasley immediately!"

She hurried out. By the time she returned, Snape, Molly Weasley, and Arthur Weasley were also in her office. Ginny turned milk white at the sight of her parents, freckles standing out starkly across her face. When Dumbledore concisely related the tale of Tom Riddle's diary to the adult Weasleys, Ginny stared at the floor, shaking ever so slightly, and then burst into relieved tears when her mother grabbed her in a tight hug.

"Haven't I taught you _anything_?" Arthur said, flabbergasted, but he patted Ginny on the shoulder nonetheless. "What have I always told you? Never trust anything that can think for itself _if you can't see where it keeps its brain_. Why didn't you show the diary to me, or your mother? A suspicious object like that, it was _clearly_ full of Dark Magic!"

"I d-didn't know," sobbed Ginny. "I found it inside one of the books Mum got me. I th-thought someone had just left it in there and forgotten about it…"

"Molly, Arthur, I understand your concerns," Dumbledore said urgently, "but I asked you here to give permission for me to use Legilimency on your daughter, assuming you agree, Miss Weasley."

Ginny pulled away from Molly, wiping her eyes. "What's Legilimency?"

Dumbledore explained it quickly, and said, "If you really have opened the Chamber of Secrets, your memories of the time will still be inside your mind, merely buried deeply. With Legilimency, I can hopefully access them. It may be the only way to save Harry Evans."

"Do you think he has Tom's diary now?"

"Yes," Dumbledore said softly. "I believe he found it after you threw it away, and that he was far more susceptible to Tom's lure."

"Is he going to get in trouble?"

Snape spoke before Dumbledore could. "No."

His gaze was hard, fixed on Dumbledore, who glanced up at him briefly and then looked back to Ginny. "Harry is as much a victim as you were. He is not responsible for his actions."

Ginny nodded. "Okay. Do the spell."

"Will it hurt her?" Molly asked.

"Not at all," Dumbledore promised. "Miss Weasley, please sit here. Thank you. Now, I'm going to look into your eyes and I need you to blink as little as possible."

For nearly a full minute, the room was silent as Dumbledore and Ginny simply stared at each other. Molly and Arthur watched with clear concern and Snape stared so hard that Minerva wondered if he was trying to get into Ginny's head himself.

Dumbledore finally blinked and looked away. He glanced up at Minerva and Snape and nodded, then looked at Molly and Arthur.

"Mr and Mrs Weasley, please remain here with Ginny until someone comes for you."

"Did you find it?" Arthur asked.

"Yes," Dumbledore said quietly.

Minerva and Snape followed him out, neither of them speaking as they stalked through the halls, not even when Dumbledore brought them to a girls' bathroom on the second floor. Minerva watched him inspect the sink taps, exchanging a single baffled look with Snape, and soon enough Dumbledore straightened up.

"Minerva, we need roosters," he said. "Two or three should do. Severus, Reductor Curse at this sink, on my count."

Utterly baffled but not about to question him when things were so serious, Minerva conjured two roosters and a cage for them, while Dumbledore and Snape aimed their wands at the sink. Myrtle, hovering over the stalls and watching with grumpy curiosity, shrieked and dive-bombed her toilet when they let off their Reductor Curses, flooding water through the bathroom. The remains of two sinks and glass shards from every mirror floated in the overflow, the force of the combined curses causing more damage than Myrtle had ever managed even during her worsts tantrums. Behind the hole they'd made was a pipe large enough for even Hagrid to have fit down.

"What's down there, Albus?" Snape asked.

Dumbledore looked solemnly at them both. "A basilisk."

Minerva gasped. Snape went, if possible, even paler.

"I will go first," Dumbledore continued. "Send the roosters after me, then follow yourselves. Minerva, Severus—" he gave them both a severe look "—whatever else happens, the diary must be destroyed."

Minerva nodded, clutching her wand tightly. Snape looked into the hole.

"Into the abyss we go," he murmured.

* * *

Severus hadn't been this terrified since the day Voldemort went after Lily and Harry. His son was down in the very bowels of Hogwarts, kidnapped by some unknown enemy who had a basilisk at his command.

He didn't let himself think that it might be Voldemort down there, possessing some other poor bastard like he had Quirrell and this time intent on making sure Harry died.

As they moved through the underground cavern, they came across a snake skin that confirmed Dumbledore's claim. Severus had been hoping it was a mistake, that the old man had misread the Weasley girl's memories, but there was no denying it now. He swallowed thickly, wondering if there would even be a body for him to find once they reached the Chamber of Secrets itself. Harry was probably nothing more than a biscuit snack to a thousand year old basilisk.

They moved on until they reached a large door carved with snakes. There was no apparent way to open it and it was so thick that it took two hits of combined Reductor Curses from all three of them before they finally broke through. The massive chamber beyond initially appeared suspiciously empty until they noticed the small, figure lying at the far end, beneath the statue of Salazar Slytherin.

Severus started towards it—then something loomed at the edge of his vision. He almost looked up, snapped his eyes shut at the last moment, then felt a spell grab him and wrench him backwards. He felt the rush of air as something big and alive came down just inches in front of him, stinking breath gusted over him, and he felt as much as heard the angry hiss of a snake that missed its prey.

The roosters crowed. Severus pressed himself to the rocks beside the door and opened his eyes. Beside him, a huge snake mouth was halfway through the hole, but at the noise of the roosters it reared back. Minerva jabbed the roosters with her wand and they crowed again, louder this time. Severus heard the basilisk writhing in the Chamber beyond, and swore he heard someone yell furiously in objection.

Then there was a heavy thud.

"NO!"

Severus didn't recognise the voice coming from the Chamber. Dumbledore darted through the hole and Severus immediately followed, hearing Minerva come behind him. They had to climb over the limp body of the basilisk, and then they stopped. At the end of the Chamber, a teenage boy—maybe sixteen or seventeen, hair dark, looking oddly blurry around the edges—stood pointing Harry's wand at Harry himself, laying limply on the floor. A small black diary rested on his chest.

"Merlin," Minerva breathed, staring at the teenager with stunned recognition. Severus didn't know who he was and he didn't care, he just fixed his wand on the boy.

"One step closer and he dies," the teenager said.

"You won't kill him, Tom," Dumbledore said calmly. "If you kill Harry now, you'll never return to power yourself." He started walking. Severus felt his heart stutter, but although Tom's hand clenched on the wand he cast no spell. "You cannot beat all three of us and we won't give you the time to finish draining the life from Harry. Give up gracefully."

"Don't be so sure, old man. There's not much left in him."

Dumbledore flicked his wand. Tom conjured a shield, but with two more sharp motions from Dumbledore, Tom was thrown off his feet and the diary on Harry's chest came hurtling towards Dumbledore. He snatched it out of the air and thrust it at Severus.

"Destroy it! Minerva, get Harry!"

Then he was duelling with Tom, holding him off so Minerva could get to Harry.

Severus set down the diary and pointed his wand at it. " _Destruo_."

A spell that should have disintegrated the book, it just bounced harmlessly off. He tried the Reductor Curse, then several increasingly powerful destructive hexes, but not one of them harmed the book. Even Sectumsempra couldn't scratch the cover.

A spell flashed past his head and he ducked, spun. Minerva had Harry pulled away to the side and stayed by him as she threw spells at Tom, forcing him to defend from two sides. Even so, the boy was doing a surprisingly good job of holding his own. He was being assaulted on two sides by experienced adult wizards, but he hadn't gone down and he was managing to get off the occasional curse aimed towards Severus. Dumbledore and Minerva were shielding him from most of them, but one slipped past and Severus dived aside. The spell flew past and slammed into the basilisk, fizzling out harmlessly against its skin. Even dead, basilisk skin was tough.

It was also full of venom, Severus suddenly realised. There were few substances more destructive than basilisk venom.

He snatched up the diary and ran for the head. He didn't know exactly where the venom sacs were, nor what kind of pressure they might have, so he didn't cut into the creature's head. He waved his wand and the mouth opened up, baring two fangs as large as his own arm, then slipped his wand up his sleeve to hold the diary firmly in both hands. He stepped back to swing it forward with as much force as he could—

Something struck his back. He fell, hit the basilisk, went down screaming.

" _Severus!_ "

He hung with one hand pierced by the basilisk fang, holding him half off the floor. Spasms of pain shot up and down his spine and his hand burned. His vision wavered, head drooping. He saw the diary on the floor beneath him, a black blur, but he couldn't reach it.

Someone laughed. It almost sounded like Voldemort.

"I will win, Dumbledore!"

Severus could barely concentrate, but he knew one thing right then. Harry's life was in danger and he had to destroy the diary. He didn't even know exactly how the diary was connected to Harry or what it had to do with Tom, but he knew he had to destroy it, and he would even if it was the last thing he did.

He fumbled for his wand, almost dropped it. He managed to get a good enough grip to give an unsteady swish and flick, and the diary rose wobbly off the floor. He almost passed out when he lifted his head to look up at the fang, but he forced himself to do it, jerked his wand, and the diary impaled on the fang.

Then everything went black.

* * *

 **Credit:** "Destruo" is from _A Guide to Spells, Curses, and Hexes_ by Terion (user id 74156)


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

Gradually Harry became aware that he was lying on a cold stone floor, a familiar weakness in his right side, the taste of vomit in his mouth. The last thing he remembered was Tom Riddle standing over him, but when he blinked his eyes open now it was to find McGonagall knelt beside him.

"Welcome back, Mr Evans," she said with one of her rare smiles.

Harry pushed himself up, feeling a little dizzy but getting better, and looked around. His eyes widened when he saw the basilisk—and then he gasped when he saw Snape face-down on the floor beside it, sleeve soaked with blood, face even more pallid than usual. Dumbledore knelt by him, running his wand up and down Snape's spine, and a phoenix was bent over his hand.

"Professor!"

He went to stand, but stumbled as a wave of dizziness hit him. McGonagall caught his arm, steadying.

"Careful."

"What happened?" Harry asked, staring at Snape. McGonagall helped him move closer, but stopped him far enough back to keep out of Dumbledore's way. The phoenix lifted its head and Harry saw a tear spill off its beak and onto Snape's hand right before it hopped away a step.

"He took a nasty curse and was poisoned by the basilisk," McGonagall said gravely.

"Is he going to die?" Harry's voice shook.

McGonagall didn't answer, but Dumbledore stopped his spell casting, wiped a hand across his brow, and looked up at them both. He smiled. "He will live."

Harry and McGonagall both breathed a sigh of relief.

"I've stopped the curse, but I expect Madam Pomfrey will want to examine him." He stood, conjured a stretcher directly underneath Snape, then levitated it up. "I think it's time we got on our way."

Harry would have vanished the basilisk, but Dumbledore told him to leave it, saying Snape might want to harvest it for potion ingredients. He went ahead, Snape floating along behind him, and Harry and McGonagall followed. Harry looked back as they climbed out of a large, broken doorway.

"This is the Chamber of Secrets, isn't it?"

"It is," McGonagall confirmed.

Harry glanced between her and the headmaster. "You know, don't you? That it was me? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to. There was this diary—Riddle's diary—it had something to do with it, I couldn't control myself—"

"Mr Evans, calm down," Dumbledore said gently, looking over his shoulder with a smile. "We know you're not to blame for what happened."

Harry wasn't sure he believed that, but he didn't speak of it again as they made their way back through the tunnels and came to a large sloping pipe.

"Is that the way out?"

"Yes," Dumbledore said, and peered up the pipe. "I think… Minerva, if you and Harry go up with Fawkes first, I think I can levitate Severus up after you."

"Albus, that pipe was far too long for that, even for you. Not to mention you'll have to angle him; that stretcher won't lay flat going up. There has to be a better way."

"I can take him up," Harry offered. "I can fly up with him and make sure he doesn't fall off."

"What are you talking about? You don't have a broom, you can't fly up there, and controlling a Levitation Charm while—"

She broke off, gaping as Harry lifted off his feet, floating several inches off the floor.

"I believe I did mention that he has a remarkable amount of power," Dumbledore said.

"I know, but I never…" She trailed off, speechless.

"Are you sure you can keep him steady, Harry?" Dumbledore asked, and Harry nodded. Dumbledore set the stretcher down, so as not to risk it dropping when Harry took control, and then at Harry's Wish it floated back up. "Please wait for us when you reach the top."

"Yes, sir."

He went to the pipe, peered in a moment, then angled himself and the stretcher before floating into it, making sure to Wish Snape to remain carefully in place.

He came out in a flooded, half-wrecked bathroom, where he remained airborne, looking around at the mess until McGonagall and Dumbledore appeared, clutching the tail of the phoenix until it set them down.

"Did I do that?" Harry asked, gesturing at the mess.

"No, this was my doing," Dumbledore said, smiling. He drew his wand, vanished the water covering the floor, and then fixed the broken sinks. When it was all done, he turned to McGonagall. "Minerva, could you inform the rest of the staff of what happened, then tell the students that we will no longer be closing the school. I will accompany Severus and young Mr Evans to the Hospital Wing."

They all left the bathroom, McGonagall heading one way and Harry trudging reluctantly with Dumbledore in another direction, Snape's stretcher still floating along behind them. He knew that soon enough he was going to have to tell the headmaster everything that occurred since Christmas and he didn't believe for a moment that Dumbledore had meant what he said in the tunnels.

When they reached the Hospital Wing, Madam Pomfrey was administering the Mandrake Juice to the petrified victims and the sight of it made Harry's gut twist with guilt. Only one of the four was his fault, but that didn't make him feel any better because there should have been five.

"Headmaster! Mr Evans!" Pomfery gasped, and Harry wasn't sure which of them she was most surprised to see. Then she noticed Snape, and her tone turned all business. "What happened?"

"A spinal curse," Dumbledore said, directing Harry to set Snape on one of the empty beds. "I've cured it, however. He was also poisoned by a basilisk, but Fawkes cried for him. I think he'll be fine, until you've finished with the Mandrake Juice."

Pomfrey looked doubtful—she'd gone parchment pale at the words 'basilisk venom'—but seemed to trust Dumbledore's diagnosis and returned to her task.

Dumbledore sent Harry to another bed, pulling a curtain half around to hide him from view of the petrified victims.

"Now," he said, conjuring a chair for himself to sit in, "why don't you tell me how you found Tom Riddle's diary and everything that has happened since."

Unhappily, Harry did. It wasn't a long story, really, and when he was finished he asked, "Am I going to be expelled now? Or arrested?"

"Not at all," Dumbledore assured him. "There will be no punishment."

"Even though I… I killed Penelope Clearwater?"

"You did not kill Miss Clearwater," Dumbledore told him firmly. "The basilisk did and Riddle controlled you and it. You are no more to blame for her death than anyone else in this castle. Older and wiser men than you have been hoodwinked by Lord Voldemort."

"Voldemort? What do you mean?"

"Ah, you aren't aware of that. Tom Riddle is Voldemort's real name. Fifty years ago, he was a student here at Hogwarts. The diary you wrote in was not simply an enchanted journal; it contained a piece of him and his memories."

Harry gaped. "So I've spent half a year telling Lord Voldemort about my school life? That's insane. Does the real Voldemort know? The spirit, or whatever? Is he connected to the diary at all?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "No, he would not be aware of what occurred this year. At the most, he might have felt something when the diary was destroyed, but that is all."

Madam Pomfrey was done with the Mandrake Juice by then. Dumbledore told Harry to remain where he was and went to talk to them while Pomfrey examined Snape. With the curtains pulled around his bed, Harry could only hear a murmur of voices beyond; they must have been enchanted to muffle noise. He found himself glad. He wasn't sure he could face the hatred that would come from Tyler.

* * *

Lucius Malfoy stormed into Dumbledore's office within minutes of the headmaster's return, furious and demanding to know where Dumbledore got the nerve to come back to the school from which he'd been suspended. He left with a lot less confidence than he came in with, but he still called on the rest of the school governors, determined to do something.

An hour later, Lucius returned to his manor in a foul mood. He kicked Dobby so hard the little elf flew all the way down the hall and smashed into the wall at the end with a crack and a wail of pain. Lucius snarled. The other governors had some nerve, asking him to step down because 'we no longer feel you're suited to the position'.

He stormed to the cellar, throwing the door open so hard it smacked against the wall. Inside he moved through to the back, drew his wand and cut his palm then smeared blood to an unremarkable section of wall. A hidden door swung open and he stepped through, healing the wound on his hand with a murmured spell as the door swung shut behind him.

On the other side was a small suite made up of a bedroom and a bathroom. There were no windows, but a couple of torches on the walls provided circles of light. A single bed was tucked in one corner, a small table with two chairs was set in the centre, and a bookcase stood against one wall.

A man was in the room, sat on the edge of the bed and dressed for the night. He didn't rise when Lucius entered, but looked up warily, whole body tense. He opened his mouth to speak, but Lucius didn't give him chance.

" _Crucio!_ "

When the curse stopped, the man lay gasping and didn't get up. He didn't ask why he was tortured; had he done something to deserve it, he'd know it, and if he hadn't, he'd know he was just the target of Lucius' frustrations. A convenient target for Lucius to vent himself on when he was in a bad mood.

That day, Lucius was in a very bad mood.

* * *

Severus wasn't surprised when McGonagall turned up as his office not long after he reached it the next morning. He'd argued hard with Pomfrey about releasing him, eventually winning when he promised he would rest and not go stalking through the halls looking for miscreants to punish. He pretended to give it begrudgingly, but in truth he had no desire to go wandering about the castle. His back still ached some and he put cushioning charms on his chair before he sat in it.

McGonagall turned up five minutes later, shut the door behind her, and sat down opposite him without invitation.

"Who else knows?"

"Good morning to you too, Minerva. I'm fine, by the way."

She waved his comment off. "Of course you are, Poppy assured me you would be when I came by last night, and she wouldn't have—"

"You came by?" he interrupted, and saw a faint flush creep up her neck.

"I stopped by to check on the students and asked after you while I was there," she said stiffly. "Now tell me who else knows that Harry's your son."

He might have teased her more for the flush—he didn't think it was anything lewd, but neither of them tended to be too open about their feelings—but hearing those words stopped him short. It was strange to hear them spoken.

"No one," he told her stiffly. "No one alive, anyway."

"Not Albus?"

Severus laughed dryly. "The last thing I need is that old fool meddling in my business."

She frowned. "Really, Severus, that's not—"

"He nearly killed Harry this year."

"What are you talking about?"

"Didn't he tell you? Oh, but of course he wouldn't have. God forbid he reveal his own mistakes."

She scowled. "Severus, if you don't explain yourself…"

He waved a placating hand. He drew his wand, tapped it to the bottom draw on his desk, opened it and took out a bottle of vodka and a couple of shot glasses. McGonagall's eyebrows rose, but she said nothing as he poured one and shook her head when he offered her a shot. He shrugged and downed his own.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Are you aware of Harry's power?"

She nodded. "Albus mentioned it to me last year, after the incident with Quirrell, but I only witnessed it last night."

Severus glowered. "He told you then?"

"Why? When did you find out?"

"In the summer, when Harry told me himself. He only did so because Albus put magic restraints on him."

"What do you mean?" McGonagall leant forward, resting her arms on the edge of his desk. "What kind of restraints?"

"Two black cuffs, etched with runes designed to suppress a person's magic."

Her frown deepened. "I remember seeing Evans wearing something of the sort during the first term. I thought it was a fashion thing."

"So did I until he told me otherwise. I examined them when he explained what they were, which he did because he almost killed himself trying to take them off with a Cutting Curse."

"I don't understand. How could he have done a Cutting Curse with magic suppressant restraints?"

Severus smiled thinly. "Which is exactly why Albus put them on him. He has more power than any of us could even dream of having, and Albus didn't like that. He put the restraints on so Harry would have to use a wand like the rest of us mere mortals. But it had an unforeseen side effect—all that magic had nowhere to go, so it built up inside Harry until his body couldn't take it anymore. That's why he was in the Hospital Wing at the start of the Christmas holidays. Poppy had to call in two specialist healers to figure out what was wrong with him, and he nearly died twice."

"No! You can't be serious?"

"I wouldn't joke about this."

He poured himself another shot of vodka, but McGonagall reached across and took it for herself, throwing it back and then coughing at the burn.

"Sweet Merlin," she gasped, one hand to her chest. "What was that?"

"Cheap vodka. Here." He conjured her a glass of water and she gulped some down.

"Remind me never to take drinks from you again."

She drank half the water and he took a shot of the vodka for himself before putting it and the glass away. He leant back in his chair, closing his eyes.

"Do you plan to tell Harry the truth?"

He jerked his eyes open again, glaring across the desk at her. "No, and if you do, Minerva, I swear, I'll Obliviate you both!"

"Now really!"

"I mean it. I'm not father material. There's no need for Harry to know. I only told you because…"

"You were scared."

He scowled, but didn't deny it.

"How did it happen, anyway?" she asked. "How did you and Lily…?"

"An error in judgement. For both of us. We happened to meet one night, got talking, and… things happened. It was just the once."

"Enough for an accident to happen."

He snorted and didn't answer.

"Did James know?"

"I don't know," he answered honestly. "Lily and I agreed that I would have nothing to do with the child when it was born. I've no idea what she told her friends, if anything." He paused, then added, "I'm surprised you haven't asked if I'm sure he's even mine."

"I don't need to," she said, surprising him. "He's got enough of Lily in him that at first you don't notice that he doesn't have any of James, but now that I know there's not a doubt in my mind. Do you really refuse to tell him?"

"Yes," he said firmly.

"What makes you so certain you can't be a father? You've always handled the Slytherin students well enough."

"That's different. Besides, how would I explain it to him? How do you tell a child why you haven't given them a home for twelve years? He would hate me."

"I'm sure he wouldn't."

He didn't respond, but she could surely read the disbelief in his face.

* * *

Harry was terrified of facing the school when word got out of what happened, but by the time he left the hospital wing, the gossip mill had already worked mostly in his favour. The commonly believed story was that Harry had been possessed by the spirit of Salazar Slytherin—initially it had been Slytherin's heir, but it altered as these stories tended to—which was close enough to the truth without going over the complex details of Riddle's diary that Harry readily agreed when people asked him about it.

Ginny's part in the whole thing was unknown except to a select few. Colin Creevey, Justin Finch-Fletchley, and Nearly Headless Nick hadn't noticed her when they were attacked, so they all thought Harry was responsible for their petrifaction. Harry didn't correct them. It would only complicate things, and he felt guilty enough to accept the blame, even though Justin hated him. Sir Nicholas graciously forgave Harry, and Colin was happy to when Harry promised to buy him a new camera to replace the one destroyed by the basilisk's gaze. He had so much money in his Gringotts vault that forking out for a camera was hardly a problem.

Harry had been most worried about Tyler, but he accepted that the possession wasn't Harry's fault and was willing to forgive him. He was a bit wary around Harry in the last weeks of term, but at least he _was_ hanging around with him. Hopefully with time Tyler would forgive him completely. Either that, or change his mind and tell Harry to sod off completely, which would make life difficult when they shared a dorm.

Exams were cancelled—except for the OWL and NEWT students—but they still had three weeks left of term. Lockhart had run away the night Riddle took Harry, leaving his resignation on his desk, so they didn't have Defence classes anymore, but most people weren't sad to see him go.

Harry was surprised when Ginny Weasley approached him one afternoon before dinner, while he lounged by the lake with Cid and Tyler. She looked nervous at approaching three Slytherins on her own, but proved her Gryffindor courage by coming up to them anyway and asking, "Can I talk to you, Evans?"

He nodded and got up, walking around the water's edge with her until they were out of earshot, but not sight, of the other students. Ginny didn't speak immediately, glancing at him nervously then away again. He assumed she wanted to say something about the heir of Slytherin business, but he wasn't sure what kind of attitude she would take with it, so he didn't try starting the conversation himself.

Eventually she blurted out, "Everyone says you petrified everyone."

"Yeah," he agreed.

"But you didn't." It wasn't a question.

"No. I know it was you."

She stopped short. She had a messenger bag slung across her and she twisted the strap between her hands, staring at her feet. "Tom told you, didn't he?"

"No," he answered honestly, and she looked up in surprise. "I saw you throw the diary away."

"What? How?"

"I have an invisibility cloak. Don't tell anyone, please."

"I won't. So, you were there on Christmas? In that room with all the objects?"

He nodded. "I was sneaking up to Gryffindor tower to play a prank when I saw you. I thought you were acting weird so I followed you and when you threw the diary away, I picked it up."

"Why didn't you tell anyone?" she asked miserably. "You let Colin and Justin and Sir Nicholas believe you petrified them, even though Justin hates you now."

He wasn't all that bothered by Justin. It wasn't like he wanted to be friends with Justin, and he wasn't so self-centred or foolish as to believe that everyone in the world should like him.

But he answered her, "It would only confuse people. Only the headmaster, Snape, and McGonagall know about the diary. Everyone just thinks I was possessed by a spirit and it would make things complicated if we told them you were possessed first."

"But some people are still blaming you. Not everyone believes you were possessed. If you told them about me—"

"Do you want me to tell them?"

She looked away and twisted her bag strap again. "No," she admitted quietly. "I know that makes me a coward and I shouldn't be in Gryffindor—"

Harry snorted and she glanced at him. "You're a Weasley. Isn't Gryffindor where all Weasleys are meant to be?"

She looked around and then lowered her voice and said, as if imparting a dark secret, "The hat said I would have done well in Slytherin."

A moment passed. Harry realised Ginny was expecting some kind of response from him.

"Oh." When this didn't appear to be enough, he added, "It suggested I go to Hufflepuff."

She blinked. "Really? But you're a Parselmouth."

He cocked his head, a thought suddenly coming to him. "Aren't you?"

"No!" She sounded horrified.

"But how did you control the basilisk?"

" _Tom_ did it."

"But he did it through you, right? So you must have been speaking Parseltongue."

"Well, yeah, but it wasn't really me. I could only speak it when he possessed me."

"Oh."

They stood in silence for a few moments. Harry cleared his throat. "So… I won't tell anyone about you, if that's what you were worried about."

"Thanks," she said earnestly. "And I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"If I hadn't thrown away the diary, you never would have picked it up. You wouldn't have nearly died."

"Yeah," he agreed slowly, "but if you hadn't, you'd have been the one he took down to the Chamber of Secrets and there wouldn't have been anyone that Dumbledore could have learnt the location of the Chamber from."

Her mouth dropped open. "Oh," she said quietly. "I hadn't thought of that."

"If you hadn't have thrown it away, you'd have died down there and the school would have shut down and the basilisk run loose and Riddle would have come to life. You pretty much saved the world by throwing that diary away."

She gaped at him. " _What?_ What are you talking about? He'd have come to _life_?"

He explained the whole thing to her, even who Riddle really was. She had a right to know and what he'd said was true. If she'd kept the diary, things would have turned out much worse.

"God," she whispered afterwards. "I knew he was bad, but I never…" She shuddered. "Anyway, I'm glad you're okay and thanks again for not telling anyone."

"Thanks for helping to save my life," he told her, smiling. "I'll see you around."

She nodded, made to hold out her hand, stopped, dropped it, then lifted it again and made a fist. A little surprised, Harry made one of his own and bumped his knuckles against her. She smiled at him, and headed off.

Harry went back to Cid and Tyler, but he'd barely sat down when Lisa Patterson came up to them and said that Snape wanted to see Harry.

He found Snape in his office and took a seat when Snape gestured to it, after shutting the door.

"I will be remaining in the castle for the duration of the holiday," Snape began, baffling Harry until he continued, "Professor Dumbledore has given his permission for you to remain here with me, if you so wish, under certain conditions."

"Yes," Harry agreed immediately, then asked, "What conditions?"

"You will have to share my living quarters rather than remain in Slytherin alone. You're also not to tell anyone that you're staying here; we can't have word get out that special permission is being given for you to stay in the castle. It would draw unwanted attention."

"Alright. Why's Dumbledore offered it anyway? Is he trying to keep me close now he knows he can't force me back to the Dursleys?" He didn't try to keep the sneer from his voice.

The corners of Snape's lips twitched. "Very possibly, in all honesty. I think he's realised he made a very bad error in judgement with his actions towards you last summer."

"I'm not going to forgive him just because he says I can stay here."

"I doubt he expects you to. I think he would just prefer to know where you are, regardless of your opinion of him. Besides, do you have anywhere else to go for the holiday?"

Harry shrugged. He had planned to go to Gringotts, get out some gold and convert it to Muggle money, and then find a hotel to stay at.

"I thought not," Snape said. "On a related note, you have an appointment with Healer Karpel on the first of July."

"What for? I never got a letter about that."

"I expect it's en route; I was made aware as your primary medical contact. It's just a general check-up, to see how you're doing with the potion. They'll happen fair regularly I expect. Yearly, at the very least."

"Yay," Harry sighed. "More hospital visits."

* * *

On the final day of term, Harry said goodbye to his friends and watched the carriages take them off. He'd told them that he would be flooing to Saint Mungo's from Hogwarts for an appointment, which is why he wouldn't be taking the train with them, and would then get delivered to his non-existent foster family.

As the last of the carriages pulled away, Harry looked to Snape, who, with McGonagall, had been tasked with over-looking the leaving students. Professors Flitwick and Sprout had gone with the carriages to oversee things at Hogsmeade station.

"Sir, what are those winged horses that pull the carriages called?"

Snape looked down at him in surprise, but it was McGonagall who asked, "You can see those?"

"I'm only _half_ blind," Harry pointed out.

"Yes," Snape said, "but Thestrals are only visible to people who have witnessed a death."

Harry looked away, staring out the still open doors to the distant carriages. "Oh."

"I thought you couldn't remember the attacks on Tyler Lyle and Penelope Clearwater," McGonagall said.

"I don't."

"Then who have you seen die, Evans?" Snape asked.

Harry shrugged. "I lived on the streets. People died. Drug addicts. Other homeless people. I saw a gang fight once and someone got stabbed, although I'm not sure if he actually died, 'cause they took him away in an ambulance. So what now?"

He didn't look at either teacher, and they didn't mention his change of subject.

"We have a staff meeting," Snape said. "You will go down to my classroom and begin taking stock of the student store cupboard. Make a list of everything in it and how much there is."

Harry turned, gaping at him. "What? Why? That's like a detention! You can't give me detention in the summer, I haven't even done anything wrong!"

"It's not a detention, I simply have no intention of letting you laze about all summer. I will be down to join you once the staff meeting is over; there's plenty of work to be done. Us teachers don't get to start our summers when you students do."

Harry spun to McGonagall. "Professor—"

But she shook her head, smiling. "I'm sorry, Mr Evans. Professor Snape is in charge of you for the summer and the task is nothing extreme. I might make use of you myself during the end of year clean up. It'll certainly be quicker with an assistant."

"Off you go," Snape said, jerking his head towards the entrance to the dungeon. "The sooner you start, the sooner you finish."

Grumbling, Harry stomped off.

It wasn't really all that bad. He was done by the time Snape turned up an hour later, but there was Snape's private stores to check next, and then a number of other tasks. Harry's Wish Magic made things faster than they would normally, especially with the filthy cauldrons that Snape hadn't found a student to put in detention to clean.

They took dinner in the Great Hall. The house tables were gone, a single circular table in place so the staff could all more easily converse with one another. Some of them had left for the summer already, and others were leaving over the next few days. Aside from Snape, the only others staying behind for the full summer were McGonagall, Dumbledore, and Trelawney (who wasn't at the meal and who Harry only knew from sneaking into classes last year). The rest would start trickling back around mid-August.

After dinner, Snape showed Harry to his quarters. It was much nicer and larger than his house, but still heavy with books, and had a laboratory attached that also connected to his office. He had only one bedroom, but the school house elves had manipulated the castle to add an extra one and Harry's trunk was already in it.

The next day, Snape went down to the Chamber of Secrets and Harry begged to go down with him.

"Why?"

"I didn't really get to see it last time, and it's not dangerous anymore."

"Just because the basilisk is dead and Riddle gone does not mean it is safe."

"It's safe enough for you and I can look after myself. Please, sir. I can help you collect the venom and scales and stuff."

Snape relented under the condition Harry stay within his sight at all times and do exactly as he was told. His 'helping' to harvest the dead basilisk consisted of holding the vials and jars for Snape to put things in, which wasn't exactly fun, and he vanished the stripped corpse afterwards, but it was a novel way to spend his morning so he didn't complain too much.

Harry had all his homework finished within a week and spent a lot of time exploring the castle, finding secret passageways and short cuts that he hadn't before. He flew using the school broomsticks occasionally, but could only do it when Snape or McGonagall agreed to fly with him. They ordered him to keep it slow, but that wasn't a problem using the school's ancient Shooting Stars.

His appointment with Kirith on 1st July went smoothly, although she was exasperated to hear about his possession. Harry wouldn't have mentioned it, but Snape brought it up because Kirith was the only neurologist who'd studied dark magics that affected the brain. Like the magic restraints, it would have interfered with the effects of the anticonvulsant.

"Do you think you can try at least six months without something affecting your mind?" she asked, only half joking.

"I'll try," Harry said, grinning.

Halfway through July, on a particularly boring day, Harry invented a new game which involved jumping off a moving staircase and onto a lower one, using his magic only to stop himself getting killed. He was forbidden from doing wand magic, but his Wish Magic remained undetected by the Ministry Trace. For extra thrills, he aimed for staircases with trick steps on them. It was one of the more dangerous things he'd ever done, but he didn't like being bored. When he was bored, it was all too easy to remember that he'd killed someone and he didn't like thinking about that. It made him feel sick.

His new game kept him entertained for several hours until McGonagall saw him leap off a staircase and shrieked loud enough to make several portraits slap their hands over their ears. Harry lost his concentration and hurtled downwards for two terrifying seconds before catching himself again.

McGonagall lectured him for nearly five whole minutes about doing stupid and life threatening activities, then made him scrub the entire Great Hall without magic.

It was a week before his birthday when everything went wrong. Harry was bored and snuck into Snape's bedroom while the man was in his lab that evening so he could check out the books. Harry figured that the ones in a room where he wasn't supposed to go where probably the most interesting, and even if they weren't, it was more fun to sneak in and have a look at them than it was to read the ones he had permission to access. He still had unread books from his trip to the Room of Hidden Things at Christmas, but the lure of the forbidden was far more appealing.

The bedroom itself wasn't inviting, dark and undecorated, the bed neatly made but no personal effects on the shelves or bedside table. The bookshelves were tall enough that Harry had to levitate himself up to see the ones on the highest shelf. He pulled some out, flicking through them, but was disappointed to find nothing particularly interesting.

He was intrigued by a thin book with no title that was tucked between two Herbology texts, but it was so tightly packed in that he had to pull out one of the Herbology books to get to it. Something slid from between the pages when he did, and he dropped to the floor, swearing softly, to pick it up. Hopefully it hadn't been marking any particularly important page and he could just stick it back inside without worry.

But he forgot about that when he picked it up. It was a Muggle envelope, white paper instead of yellowed parchment, and written on the front of it in carefully printed but decidedly childish handwriting was _To Father Christmas_.

He had a sudden, vivid memory of sitting on his bed back at Privet Drive one winter with that letter clutched in his fist, trying to stay awake and desperately listening for the sound of reindeer hooves on the roof. He was willing to give up his Famous Figurines, as well as any other gifts that might be coming for him for the rest of his life, in exchange for being taken away instead.

He remembered waking up to a noise in the house, the letter gone and a new present at the foot of his bed. He remembered going to the bathroom and hearing noises from his aunt and uncle's room, looking in to see a stranger in a cloak with something that might have been a knife but was probably a wand, a stranger who'd mysteriously vanished unseen in the time it took the police to get to the house.

He hadn't seen a face that night, had barely seen anything in the darkness of the room, but he knew now, without a doubt, who had been standing there over his aunt's bed.

* * *

Severus returned to his quarters just in time to see Harry exiting his bedroom. He opened his mouth to scold the boy, feeling fury start to rise up inside—how _dare_ Harry enter his private room—but then he saw the letter clutched in Harry's hands. Severus saw enough of the childish scrawl to know what it was even from a distance.

Harry's face was an expression of uncontained rage that easily outmatched Severus' own suddenly aborted anger.

"It was you," Harry said in a quietly dangerous voice that it took Severus years to perfect.

"You're not allowed in there."

Severus knew it was the wrong thing to say even as he said it, but his brain was floundering because Harry was never meant to know and Severus never figured out what to say if he ever found out.

And that was all he managed to think before he was thrown backward, feet leaving the floor as an invisible force slammed into him. He hit the door behind him, the wind knocked from his lungs milliseconds before his head smacked against stones and everything went black.

* * *

Minerva was relaxing with a cup of tea and a copy of _Witch Weekly_ when a near-hysterical house elf popped into her quarters jabbering something about Snape being dead.

She rushed through the castle to find the door to Snape's quarters ajar. Snape was on the floor just inside, groaning as he came to, the hair on the back of his head matted with blood. She hurried to his side and helped him sit up.

"What on earth happened?"

"I don't know," he said, wincing as she gingerly touched the back of his head. "The last thing I remember is leaving my lab."

She called an emergency response healer, who fixed the back of his head but said he had a concussion and needed an eye kept on him for a couple of days. While he was tended to, Minerva checked the rest of the quarters for Harry. She didn't find him, but his room was a mess, and she found an odd letter on the floor. She didn't say anything about it until the healer left and Snape settled on his sofa, then she held it out.

"What is this?"

He took it from her and his entire expression shut down on reading just the first line. "That's none of your concern."

Minerva pursed her lips. "Where's Harry, Severus?"

"I don't know."

"Did he attack you?"

" _I don't know._ "

She sniffed. "Fine."

She went to his fireplace, threw some powder into the flames, and called for Dumbledore. A minute later, the headmaster stepped out of the fire, dusting himself off and looking between them.

"Is everything alright?"

"Severus has a concussion," Minerva said tersely. "I found him unconscious. He's been seen by a healer, but needs watching for the next day. I'm going to find Harry."

Dumbledore's initial look of surprise turned concerned. "What happened?"

"I can't remember," Snape said through grit teeth.

"I found a letter—"

"Minerva!"

She glared at Snape, who glared back. Dumbledore looked between them.

"Where's Harry?" he asked. A few seconds' silence passed, then he said more sternly, "One of you explain what is going on."

Snape finally looked away from Minerva, sighing. "I don't remember what happened, but it's… possible… that Harry attacked me."

"Why?"

Snape hesitated.

"I found a child's letter," Minerva said, and ignored Snape when he growled her name. "It was written by Harry, to Father Christmas, asking that he be removed from his aunt and uncle's home because they were abusing him. It also mentioned a willingness to give back some gifts in exchange."

Snape sighed and buried his face in his hands. He said nothing.

"Severus—" Dumbledore began.

"I don't have to explain myself to you, Albus," Snape cut him off shortly. "Think what you want, but I won't explain myself." He lowered his hands and reached into his the neck of his robes. He pulled out a glowing emerald pendant on a simple leather tie and lifted it over his head, holding it out to Minerva. It was chill to the touch when it settled in her palm. "It has a tracking charm on it connected to Harry. It'll warm up the closer you get to him."

"It's cold. How far away is he?"

Snape shook his head. "Not in Scotland."

"Try London," Dumbledore suggested. "It's where he ran to before."

Minerva nodded, Snape gave her the spell to make the pendant direct her to Harry, and she left.

She took the floo to the Leaky Cauldron and felt the pendant instantly grow warm. She used the spell Snape gave her and the pendant twisted on her palm to point east, towards Muggle London. She transfigured her robes into modest Muggle-wear and left the pub, following the pendant through the city. It wasn't easy; it acted as a compass, pointing directly towards Harry, and she had to twist her way through the streets, but it grew warmer with every step until eventually it was hot enough to be nearly unbearable to touch.

By that time, she was in a derelict part of the city, her neat and tidy clothes making her stand out amongst the ragged people living on the streets. The pendant took her to a rundown house where two rough-looking teenagers blocked her way inside, a pair of fifteen year old boys, one smoking what her nose said was marijuana and the other playing with a butterfly knife that reflected the light of a fire burning in a metal barrel nearby.

"You in the wrong neighbourhood, lady," said the one with the knife.

"I'm looking for a boy," she said.

The knife twirled in practised hands. "You a cop?"

The smoker snorted. "Man, she ain't no cop, look at her. She a schoolteacher or somethin'."

"Yes, I am," Minerva said, but again didn't get to say more. The boy with the knife leered.

"You that sort. That's cool, that's cool. But none of us does that. You want rent boys you gotta try down the street."

"I am not looking for a… the boy I'm searching for is called Harry. He's twelve years old, and has black hair and green eyes. One of them is blind and duller than the other."

"Why you lookin' for him?" asked the smoker.

"I'm his teacher. He is under my care. I know he's here."

"You awful confident," said the boy with the knife. "What makes you so sure?"

"I just am."

"Maybe he is and maybe he ain't. But we ain't helpin' you. If he's here, he ran away from you."

"He ran away from my colleague. I'm here to make sure he's alright."

A voice spoke up behind Minerva. "Is he dead?"

She turned. Harry stood on the path behind her, clutching at the straps of his backpack and looking at her nervously.

"I didn't mean to attack him like that. I didn't mean to kill him. "

"He's not dead," Minerva assured him. "He has a minor concussion. He'll be fine."

Harry's shoulders slumped. "Is that all?" He sounded disappointed.

"Can we talk about what happened?"

"There's nothing to talk about."

"I saw the letter, Mr Evans."

Harry scowled.

"Will you come with me so we can talk?"

"You don't have to go, H," said boy who was smoking. "If you don't wanna, we won't let her take you."

Harry glanced over with a grateful smile then looked back at Minerva, the smile fading.

"I'm not going back there."

"You cannot stay here."

"I can stay were I like. I'm not going back."

"Will you at least come with me to the Leaky Cauldron?" Minerva asked. "I just want to talk about what happened."

He fidgeted, looked over at the two boys, then nodded. "Alright."

* * *

When Minerva returned to Hogwarts, Snape and Dumbledore were still in Snape's rooms. Snape lay across the sofa, an arm across his eyes, and Dumbledore sat in an armchair, a pensive expression on his face. Both looked around when she entered and Snape sat up. He saw her expression, noticed that Harry wasn't with her, and clenched his jaw, looking away.

"Where's Harry?" Dumbledore asked.

"Harry is spending the rest of the summer at the Leaky Cauldron," she answered tersely. "I have come to collect his belongings. Unsurprisingly, he doesn't want to be in the castle with you two any longer than he has to. I barely managed to convince him to return for schooling in September. How _could_ you?"

Dumbledore stood up. "Severus has explained everything to me. He realises—"

"I'm not just talking about him!" she snapped, and Dumbledore went quiet. "I told you that Lily's sister was no good, Albus. I told you the day you left him there that they were a bad sort, but you insisted and I trusted you."

"Minerva, I had no idea they were hurting him."

"You knew when you sent him back last summer."

"I had words with—"

"That—that _man_ almost killed him and you think you could just 'have words' with him? You were out of line, Albus, and you know it. You nearly killed Harry yourself putting those restraints on him. You've done nothing but treat that boy badly and you deserve every bit of his hate."

"I know," Dumbledore said apologetically. "You've no idea how sorry I am, Minerva."

She shook her head, untouched by his guilt, and turned on Snape. "As for you—"

"I don't need you lecturing me, Minerva," he interrupted sharply, finally looking up to meet her gaze. "I'm well aware of my mistakes."

"I certainly hope so. I am absolutely disgusted with the both of you. If I could, I'd have him transferred to Gryffindor come September. I hope you both think long and hard about what you've done. I will see you in the morning."

She gave them one last piercing look, turned, and swept out.

* * *

 **AN:** With the introduction of Lucius' prisoner, I'd like to politely ask again that old readers not mention spoilers in reviews. To new readers, I'm afraid you'll have to wait a while to find out more about that poor man.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

When Harry booked a room in the Leaky Cauldron, McGonagall tried to get him to promise that he would stay in Diagon Alley for the remainder of the holiday, but he didn't want to. They argued for a while, but when he told her he could teleport—or rather Apparate, though Harry suspected his teleportation wasn't quite the same thing—and that nothing short of magic restraints would keep him from going wherever he wanted, she caved, but got him to agree to at least come back to the Leaky Cauldron every night.

The next morning, he went to Gringotts, changed some Galleons to pounds, and teleported to the Lake District. He read about it once, years ago, and thought it sounded like a nice place to visit. He wasn't wrong. The weather was perfect, the summer heat tempered by a gentle breeze. He spent the morning walking alongside Lake Windermere, paddling in the shallows. He got lunch at a cafe and then made a Wish to make himself look like an adult and hired a rowing boat. He lay in it, letting the boat just drift, and dozed under the afternoon sun.

When he ran from Hogwarts, he left his Famous Figurines behind, and McGonagall hadn't packed them when she brought his trunk with the rest of his belongings, but he took Kiwi. She was different to the figurines, more important and less connected to Snape's betrayal. He didn't remember the birthday when he got her so Kiwi felt more like something he'd had forever instead of a gift, and he still liked to pretend that the recording on her, that soft female voice that whispered "I love you, Harry" when he squeezed her, was his mother.

The next day, he went back to the lakes and took Kiwi with him, bought a camera, and hiked through the trails. He took pictures of himself and Kiwi, perching her in trees and on top of rocks. The day after that, he went to Stonehenge; the day after, the Roman Baths; and the day after that, the Natural History Museum and London dungeons. Everywhere he went, he picked up new leaflets for tourist locations, taking anything that looked even remotely interesting.

On his birthday, McGonagall appeared while he was eating breakfast and debating how to spend his day. She hurried over with a tense expression on her face and asked if they could talk somewhere. They went up to his room, where she informed him that Sirius Black had escaped from Azkaban. Harry had heard about him, the Death Eater who blew up thirteen people the night Harry defeated Voldemort.

"How did he escape? I thought Azkaban was impenetrable."

"We don't know," McGonagall said quietly, worry clear in her voice and on her face. "I want you to come back to Hogwarts."

Harry shook his head even before she finished. "I'm not going back there any sooner than I have to."

"Mr Evans, you have no idea how dangerous Sirius Black is."

"I've read about him. He was a Death Eater. I know he was bad."

"He may be after you," she pushed. "You destroyed You Know Who. Black will want to get revenge."

"He'll have to find me first," Harry said. "Professor, I appreciate that you're trying to look out for me, but I can look after myself, I can hide from Black if I need to. I'm not going back to Hogwarts and you can't make me. Try, and I'll make sure _you_ can't find me either."

She shook her head. "You are as stubborn as your mother was."

Harry took that as a compliment.

He spent the day in Diagon Alley, wondering if perhaps he should stay in the area now there was a mass murderer on the loose, but he quickly dismissed the idea. He didn't want to give up his travels and he figured it would be harder for Black to find him if he didn't stay in one place. Assuming Black was even looking for him, but it seemed likely. It made him glad all over again that he kept his true identity hidden.

Over the next four weeks he visited a different place almost every day: Brighton beach; London Zoo and the British Museum; Warwick Castle, which was nothing compared to Hogwarts, to watch sword fights and bird shows; Buckingham Palace, where he snuck into the No Visitors areas and caught a glimpse of the Queen; and the Loch Ness to see the lake monster. He visited cathedrals and botanical gardens, got drunk at a rave in Blackpool and stoned at the Strawberry Fair in Cambridge, and climbed (well, flew mostly) up Ben Nevis mountain in Scotland.

He stayed in Diagon Alley on the last day of August, figuring he should spend the day relaxing before going back to Hogwarts. He already bought his school supplies, but he took his camera film to get developed, paying the extra price for one-hour development. He went to Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlour while he waited for them, and saw Tyler while he was there. He was with his Hufflepuff friend Alex Stone, and two people who were obviously Alex's parents, and Harry waved when he caught Tyler's eye and the four of them came over to join him.

"Hey, Harry, how's your holiday been?" Tyler greeted, dropping into a chair once they'd got their ice creams.

"Pretty good. Yours?"

"Not bad. This is Alex's mum and dad, by the way," he introduced because Alex was already digging into his chocolate sundae. "You here alone?"

"Yeah, I'm staying at the Leaky Cauldron."

"So are we. Marcus is at work but he wants to come to Kings Cross in the morning, so we're staying at the Cauldron tonight so he doesn't have to go back to Bath. Dunno why, he travels back and forth every day, but you know what adults are like."

Harry joined them as they finished their shopping for school supplies, just to have some company, but he picked up his photos alone so that Alex and Tyler wouldn't ask to see them. He didn't want them to see the ones with Kiwi in, and as he watched the Stones interacting it occurred to him that they might question why his 'foster family' wasn't in any of the pictures.

He met Tyler's adopted dad later that evening just as they sat down in the Leaky Cauldron for dinner. He was old, walked with a limp and used a cane, but his back was straight and his hardened face said he wasn't someone to be taken lightly. Nonetheless, he greeted Harry with a handshake and a smile that made his face a little less imposing.

"Marcus Fleetwood. Pleasure to meet you, Harry. Are you here alone?"

"Yes, sir, but I'm alright."

"How are you getting to the station in the morning?"

"I'm taking a taxi."

"That's not safe with Sirius Black on the loose. Would you like to come with us? Jon," he said with a nod to Mr Stone, "will be going to work in the morning anyway so we'll have a spare seat in the car."

"Oh, I'm not sure—" he began, but Mrs Stone cut him off.

"Nonsense, dear. You can't travel alone. You'll come with us."

"Oh, well, thank you." Slightly embarrassed at the insistence, he sought to change the subject and asked, "Where do you work, Mr Fleetwood?"

"Ministry of Magic, and call me Marcus."

"Just don't ask about what he does," Tyler said. "He's Head of the Department of Mysteries and the only mystery is how he doesn't kill himself out of boredom from all the paperwork he has to do."

"How come you don't have the same name?" Harry asked Tyler quietly while they ate. "I thought when someone gets adopted…"

Tyler shrugged. "Marcus thought I should keep my mum's name so I don't forget her or something."

"Oh," said Harry, who couldn't imagine ever forgetting his mother if she'd lived long enough for him to have memories of her.

Marcus owned a large, sleek, shiny black saloon car, and when Harry and Tyler lifted their trunks into the boot the next morning, Harry realised it'd been enchanted to be larger on the inside. There was no other way they'd fit three trunks in otherwise. When they were all in, Harry, Tyler, and Alex sat comfortably in the back, while Mrs Stone sat in the front and Mr Fleetwood drove.

At the station, Harry thanked them for the ride and went to find a carriage while Tyler and Alex said their goodbyes. He found Cid Villiers with Ed Coleman in a compartment and joined them, and Tyler and Alex came in shortly before the train left. They discussed their summers, Harry shrugging his off as boring and uneventful and Cid complaining that his father had heavily restricted his going out after Sirius Black broke out of Azkaban.

"Sucks for you," Tyler said unsympathetically. "Marcus put a tracking charm on me and convinced Alex's parents to do the same and we had an earlier curfew, but that was it."

"My parents didn't do anything," Ed remarked. "He was reported on the Muggle news but they didn't make such a big deal out of it as the _Prophet_. Nick and I agreed we'd keep quiet about it so they didn't decide it was too dangerous for us to go out."

"So unfair," Cid grumbled. "Wish I'd spent the summer with my mother instead; she's always eager to get me out of the house, but that might have upset Layla so maybe it's best I stayed with Dad…"

"Layla?"

"My sister. Half-sister, strictly, but neither of us care about that. She's starting at Hogwarts next year."

"I'd like a sister," Alex mused. "Or a brother. It'd be cool to have a sibling."

"Not older ones," Ed countered. "Old brothers suck. Sisters are alright though, but that could be because she's ten years older than me rather than because she's a girl."

"Is your sister a witch too?" Harry asked and Ed nodded.

"We all are. Mum and Dad were pleased with that. Nick said when Abi got her letter, they were worried we wouldn't be magic and it'd give us an inferiority complex or something. Dad's still hoping one of us will join the RAF though."

"RAF?" Cid repeated blankly.

"Royal Air Force. They're sort of like Muggle soldiers only they fight in aeroplanes instead of on the ground."

"Aeroplanes are those things Muggles use to fly, right? How do you fight in those things? And fight who?"

Harry excused himself as Ed began explaining the Muggle military and wandered up the train, looking for Hermione and Neville. He found them with a few Hufflepuffs from their own year. Justin Finch-Fletchley was among them and apparently still holding a grudge against Harry over the heir of Slytherin business, so Harry only exchanged a few words with Hermione and Neville before returning to his year mates.

It was dark when the train came to a shuddering halt, but when Tyler got up to leave they realised they were still in the midst of the Scottish Highlands. The lights went out and Alex squeaked nervously, then an intense cold washed over Harry and the rest of the compartment seemed to fade away. He heard a woman screaming and somewhere past that his uncle's voice calling him an ungrateful freak and the memory of pain as fists and feet smacked against his head again and again and again until everything went black.

* * *

Remus Lupin would be lying if he said he didn't hope to see his best friend's son on the train to Hogwarts. He was especially curious about him after Dumbledore informed him of Harry's name change, his disabilities, and his desire to keep his identity secret.

But he didn't expect that the first time he saw the boy, Harry would be on the floor of a compartment, body convulsing and a jumper tucked under his head, while four other unnerved second years sat with their feet pulled up out of the way, one of them vomiting into a paper bag while his friend held his hair back.

Remus moved to crouch by Harry, but the tallest of the boys stopped him.

"We have to wait for it to stop. It might hurt him if we try moving him."

Remus nodded. "What are your names? I'm going to send an owl ahead to the school nurse."

They gave them and Remus continued up the train, checking in the other carriages for anyone else especially affected by the Dementors. He saw a few others shivering and hugging themselves, but only a couple anywhere near as bad as Harry and Tyler. He made sure they took chocolate and got their names—Theodore Nott and Matilda Redgrave—then carried on to the driver's cabin.

The driver had a small owl for emergencies and Remus sent it off, then returned back down the train, checking in on the bad cases as he went. Matilda seemed to be recovering, nibbling on a large bar of chocolate and huddled between two of her friends, but he found Theodore standing in the space at the end of a carriage, just before the doors, still pale and shaking. Remus had got a few bars of chocolate from the trolley witch along the way and he forced one into Theodore's hands now.

"It really will make you feel better," he assured the boy. "I can heal that bruise on your face as well, if you like."

It was a large mark across his jaw, no more than a day or two old. Theodore reached up to touch it at Remus' words, then jerked his hand down again.

"No, thank you, professor," he said stiffly. "Thank you for the chocolate, but I'll be fine now. I should return to my carriage."

He was determined, so Remus let him go, hoping his friends would look out of him. He carried on down the train, finally returning to Harry's compartment. Harry was up on the seats, drowsy but responsive, and Tyler had stopped throwing up but still looked nauseous. When they both refused chocolate, Remus insisted on staying with them until the train reached the station and then stuck with them to the carriages as well.

"We can look after them, professor," said Cid as Tyler groaned at the sight of the carriage.

"There are more Dementors guarding the school," Remus told them. "I think it's best if I stay with you in case there are any more troubles. The carriage should fit the six of us."

"Ugly horses," Tyler muttered as he climbed into a carriage. Remus glanced at him, surprised and saddened. It was always disheartening to know that someone so young had seen death; he only hoped it hadn't been anything violent.

"What was that?" Alex asked, following him up. Remus waited for Cid, Ed, and Harry to follow, giving Harry an arm up when he looked like he might fall, and then climbed in after them. He shut the door and it set off.

"The horses pulling the carriages," Tyler said. "They're ugly things."

"I didn't see," Alex told him.

"There aren't any," Cid said. "It's pulling itself."

"No, it's not," Tyler insisted.

"It is," Ed countered, leaning out the window to look. "There's nothing there."

"They're called Thestrals," Harry said weakly, and Remus had to work to keep the shock off his face. Surely Harry didn't remember seeing Lily and James die? He'd been too young. "You can only see them if you've seen someone die."

For a moment, the only noise in the carriage was the rattle of the wheels. Cid stared at Tyler; Ed looked between Tyler and Harry; Alex looked at his knees; Tyler turned his head to the window; Harry leant against the side and closed his eyes.

Finally, Ed said, "You've seen someone die? Both of you?"

Another moment of silence, then Harry muttered, "Clearwater."

Remus didn't know what that meant, but the other boys must because Cid, Alex, and Ed all averted their gaze.

"That wasn't your fault," Tyler said. Harry opened his eyes just long enough to shoot him a grateful look, then shut them again and grimaced as the carriage passed through the gates, bringing them past Dementors. The rest all shivered and fell silent until they reached the school.

Remus stayed with them up to the Entrance Hall, where Severus Snape and Poppy Pomfrey waited for them. Poppy bent to inspect Harry and Severus glared at Remus.

"We'll take them from here," he said snidely. "They don't need _your_ help, Lupin."

"I don't need _your_ help," Harry snapped at him, voice full of hate.

Remus looked between them and in that instance, he knew. He marvelled that no one else did. The fact that Harry's hair didn't stick out all over the place could be dismissed as the effect of Lily's genes, but even with one of his green eyes dulled by blindness, the vicious look he gave Severus right then was identical to the one Severus had just given Remus. He had no idea how it had happened, but Severus was Harry's father.

"Ah, Poppy, you're here."

Remus looked up to see Minerva McGonagall hurrying over, a bushy-haired girl following her with a look of confusion that turned to concern when she saw Harry.

"Bring Mr Evans to my office."

Harry wasn't one of those students that decorated his uniform with any signs of his house, but Remus knew from Dumbledore that he was a Slytherin so he was surprised at Minerva's command. Severus opened his mouth to argue with her, but she gave him such a dark look that he shut his mouth again without speaking.

Clearly, Remus thought, there was something here he was missing. He would try and find out the details later.

He cleared his throat when Minerva, Poppy, Harry, and the bushy-haired girl started to move away. "Madam Pomfrey, you might want to check Tyler as well. Alex said he very nearly fainted when the Dementor came by and he was too ill to take any chocolate."

Severus bristled. "I'd thank you not to concern yourself with _my_ students, Lupin."

Remus looked at Severus calmly and replied gently, "As a teacher at this school, I will concern myself with all its students."

"Mr Lyle, come with us," Minerva said before Severus could respond. "You three, on your way," she added to Cid, Ed, and Alex, and then just loud enough for Remus and Severus to hear: "You two keep your rivalry away from the children. You're supposed to set an example."

* * *

Tyler looked like he might throw up again when Pomfrey practically force-fed him and Harry some chocolate. Harry's own nausea had passed and he sat idly eating his as Pomfrey checked him over. It chased away the lingering coldness that the Dementor caused and by the time Pomfrey was done he felt up to going to the Great Hall. He and Tyler were told to wait outside while McGonagall talked to Hermione, and then they all walked to the Great Hall together.

"Are you alright?" Hermione asked Harry, who nodded.

"Just a little tired. Had a seizure, you know how it is. Those Dementors weren't fun."

"They were horrible," she agreed with a shiver. "I'll catch you tomorrow and we can chat."

He nodded and they parted ways just inside the Great Hall.

"How did you end up friends with a Gryffindor third year?" Tyler asked as they headed down to where Cid sat.

"I knew her before I started at Hogwarts," Harry told him, which wasn't a complete lie.

They'd missed the sorting. Flitwick was just taking away the Sorting Hat and stool as Harry and Tyler sat down, and Dumbledore rose, drawing their attention before the food arrived.

"As you may have noticed, Hogwarts is playing host to the Dementors of Azkaban on business for the Ministry of Magic. They are stationed at every entrance to the grounds and while they are with us, I must make it plain that nobody is to leave school without permission. Dementors are not to be fooled by tricks or disguises—or even Invisibility Cloaks."

Dumbledore's gaze flicked towards Harry then, but he needn't bother. Harry had no plans to test either his cloak or his Wish Magic against the Dementors. He'd gladly stay as far away from them as possible.

Harry didn't get a chance to talk to Jia that evening. She was sat too far down the table from him, Tyler, and Cid and by the time the meal was over, Harry was about ready to collapse. He barely heard Dumbledore's post-meal announcement introducing Lupin as the new Defence teacher and Hagrid as the new Care of Magical Creatures teacher. He trudged down to Slytherin between Cid and Tyler without a word afterwards, and when he reached the dorm he pulled on his pyjamas, crawled into bed, and was asleep within moments.

* * *

He felt a lot better the next morning, especially after taking a shower. He grinned at Jia when he left the boys' corridor at the same time she left the girls', but it fell when she didn't return it. Instead, she sighed, hitched her bag up her shoulder, and came over to him.

"Look, Harry, I don't think we should be friends anymore."

Harry's mouth dropped. "What?"

"It's just that we hung out together at first because you knew where everything was and I didn't want to get lost, and then we just sort of carried on, then I had a bit of a crush on you but I'm over that now. Over the holidays I realised that we just don't really have anything in common and it seems like we'd both be better off if we just admitted that we're not really friends, and move on."

"Oh," he said. "Um. Alright."

She smiled, but only the way she'd smile at a stranger in the street—polite and courteous, but lacking any warmth of feeling. "I hope you had a good summer."

Harry watched her leave the common room, feeling confused and a little lost. Were they really not friends? He thought they were. They sat together in class, walked to the Hospital Wing every morning for their potions, and did homework together. Admittedly that was all they did. They didn't play games or go to clubs or sit and talk about things. But then, he didn't do that with his other friends very often. He usually ended up studying when he hung out with Hermione and Neville last year, and while he'd occasionally just chatted with Cid and Tyler, they were closer to each other than to him. He couldn't say that any one of his friends was closer than another, and he realised that while he wasn't a complete social outcast, he was still a bit of a loner. He wasn't sure if that bothered him or not.

"You'll get over it soon enough."

He jumped, turning to see Logan Sparrow. He hadn't heard him come in. "Sorry?"

"Your girlfriend. You'll get over her and move on."

"She wasn't my girlfriend."

"Then don't look so miserable she dumped you," Logan said with a shrug, and turned away before Harry could respond.

He left for the Hospital Wing, reaching it just as Jia was coming out. She didn't even glance at him and he found he didn't care, which he supposed settled the question of friendship.

Their first class that day was Defence Against the Dark Arts. Lupin opened the class by telling them that he wanted to get an idea of what level they were at—"I understand your last teacher was not particularly adequate"—and they all groaned at the prospect of a quiz on their very first day.

Lupin smiled. "I figured that might be your reaction, so I thought we'd make a game of it. Everyone stand up and move to the back of the classroom."

Intrigued now, they did so. Lupin waved his wand and all the desks and chairs moved over to stack at one side of the room, all except one which he directed to the centre of the room. With another flick, the stone floor shimmered and colours painted over it, nine different paths coming off a circle around the table. He directed them to stand at the end of each one.

"I assume you all know how to create sparks?" he asked when they were in position, and they nodded. "I'm going to ask a question, and if you think you know the answer then shoot sparks. The first person to shoot sparks gets to answer. If you get it right, you can move a step forwards—but get it wrong and you move back a step, and someone else gets a chance to answer. If you don't shoot sparks, or if the first person gets it right, then you get to stay where you are. You get two house points for every correct answer, and whoever reaches the centre first gets this."

He went to the table in the middle and placed a bar of Honeydukes chocolate on it, smiling when he saw them grinning hopefully.

It was definitely the most interesting Defence class Harry ever had. He felt confident in his ability to win, but he wasn't quick enough with his sparks a couple of times. Cid and Victoria Vaisey both got sent back two squares for cheating—Cid knocked Jia's wand out of her hand and Victoria tried sneaking forwards even when she hadn't answered a question.

The final question came down to a competition between Harry, Jia, and, surprisingly, Cid. They each clutched their wands tightly, ready to let off sparks as soon as Lupin asked the question. The tension between them was palpable.

"Ready?" Lupin asked from where he perched on his desk. The three of them nodded, gazes fixed on each other as if they could stare one another into failure. "The incantation _Saponis Inos_ is—"

Green sparks burst out of Cid's wand. "The Bubble Mouth Hex!"

Jia glared furiously. Harry tried not to sulk too obviously. Of course Cid knew that one; if he was to be believed, his mother used that spell on him three times a week.

"Are you sure that's your answer?" Lupin asked Cid.

He nodded, grinning. "Yes."

"Then I'm sorry, Mr Villiers. Back one square."

Cid's jaw dropped. "But _Saponis Inos_ is the incantation for the Bubble Mouth Hex!"

"You're right, but that wasn't my question. Back one square, please."

Cid groaned, stepping back, and Harry couldn't help grinning. He'd suffered the same fate earlier when he got over-eager, trying to make up for casting too slowly on another question.

Lupin looked between Harry and Jia. "As Mr Villiers said, _Saponis Inos_ is the incantation for the Bubble Mouth Hex. What is the incantation for the counter-curse?"

A moment passed, long enough for Harry's stomach to sink because Cid had never mentioned it and Harry never came across it in his books, and then Jia shot out pink sparks.

"Miss Liao?"

" _Mundus Os_."

Lupin smiled and Jia relaxed even before he said, "Correct. Step up and take your prize. Congratulations, Miss Liao, and well done all of you," he said to the rest of them. "You all did remarkably well. I look forward to seeing you again on Friday."

"I was so close," Cid moaned as they filed out and headed off to Herbology. " _So fucking close._ "

Tyler patted him on the shoulder. "There, there," he said dryly.

"Should have learnt your lesson from me," Harry said unsympathetically. "Besides, you've got a whole tuck box full of sweets in the dorm."

"Completely irrelevant. It wasn't about the chocolate, it was about winning."

"It was a little bit about the chocolate," Tyler said.

"Yeah, okay, it was a little bit about the chocolate."

* * *

Draco's first instinct, once Madam Pomfrey fixed his arm from the hippogriff attack, was to milk it for all it was worth. The injury would be a great way to garner sympathy and to piss off the Gryffindors. He might even be able to get that brainless oaf Hagrid fired.

But this was supposed to be the year he joined the Slytherin Quidditch team. His father promised him a Firebolt if he got onto the team, but if he milked the injury, he'd have had no chance of making it and even getting Hagrid fired wasn't worth that.

* * *

Walking to the staff room after classes on Wednesday afternoon, Remus didn't notice Snape until he almost walked into him, attention on his fifth year papers. He felt guilty for giving the fifth and seventh years theory work when he was giving the other classes more engaging starter lessons, but there was very little information on what level they were at. If he was to get these children to pass their exams in ten months time he needed to know how much mismatched education needed rounding up. Hogwarts hadn't held a Defence professor for more than a year since before Remus' own school days and he remembered how concerned his classmates had been about failing their Defence exams.

He didn't like to think much about his own future as Defence professor. That part of him that was the eternal optimist couldn't help thinking he might be the one to last past a year; the realist in him knew he'd be gone by next summer; the pessimist wondered if he'd even last a single term.

"Watch where you're going," Snape snarled.

"Sorry, Severus."

Snape's lip curled, but before he could say anything there was a terrified cry from inside the staff room. They both grabbed their wands, Remus dropping his papers in the process, and hurried inside.

The first thing they noticed was the horrendous smell. The second was Harry, backed into the corner and his face white as a sheet as he stared at a balding man of average height and wearing a long black coat. Harry held one hand up, pointing it shakily at the man and shouting for him to stop, his voice full of panic, but the man kept advancing.

" _Incarcerus!_ " Snape snarled, and there was a bang as ropes appeared and bound themselves around the man. He staggered but didn't fall and turned to face them, showing eyes that were entirely red save for the pitch black pupils. Lupin ran forwards to put himself between the man and Harry and the movement drew the man's attention. There was a loud crack, the ropes fell away, and the man turned into a hovering silver orb, revealing itself as a Boggart.

Before Remus could cast _riddikulus_ , the furniture in the room lifted off the floor and the Boggart-moon flew away from Remus to crash into the wardrobe at the other end of the room with enough force to smash through the doors.

He lowered his wand, baffled as the furniture in the room settled back down, but behind him Harry was on the brink of hyperventilating so Remus ignored the unexplained magic to turn and put his hands on the boy's shoulders.

"Harry, calm down. You're safe now."

"I-I-I couldn't—I—my mag-"

"Stop. Just breathe, alright? Let go into the corridor to get away from this smell."

Snape repaired the wardrobe with a flick of his wand and locked the Boggart inside then followed Remus and Harry out.

"That—what was that?" Harry asked shakily when he had his breathing under control.

"It was a Boggart," Remus explained. "A shape-shifter that takes the form of whatever it thinks will frighten us most."

Harry glanced towards the staff room door and swallowed. His face was still pale.

"Harry, who was that man?" Remus asked him gently.

"No one. Just someone I met once," he said when Remus frowned.

"Someone who still terrifies you now," Snape pointed out. Harry didn't even glance at him.

"I should get back to Slytherin. Thanks, professor."

"Wait," Snape ordered. "What were you doing in there in the first place?"

Once again Harry didn't even glance at him, eyes on Remus as he answered the question. "Cid dared me to put some dungbombs in there."

"That explains the smell," Remus murmured, smiling slightly. "I think the Boggart scared you enough so we won't punish you, don't you agree, Professor Snape?"

Snape nodded once and Harry muttered a thanks and rushed off. Once he disappeared from view, Remus turned and asked, "Why does he hate you so much?"

Without a student to keep face in front of, Snape's expression instantly turned distasteful. "I don't see that it's any concern of yours," he sneered, turning and walking away.

"Does he know?" Remus called after him and Snape stopped, turning slowly to face him.

"Know what?"

"I figured it out as soon as I saw him, Severus. I don't know how it happened, but I know you're his—"

"No," Snape cut in, stalking forwards to jab a finger in Remus' chest. "Nor does anyone else so you'll keep it to yourself, mutt."

"Do you plan to tell him?"

"No, and neither will you or the entire school'll know what you are and Dumbledore can find a new Defence professor."

* * *

Everyone knew about Neville's Boggart by Friday. The second year Slytherins and Hufflepuffs had Potions class first thing that morning and Harry had never heard it so quiet. Not even the Slytherins dared speak up when Snape was so obviously in such a foul mood.

After dinner, Harry went in search of Hermione and Neville. He found Hermione in the library, surrounded by a pile of books, and sat with her for a while, talking about their summers and the first week of term. Now a third year, she and Neville were taking extra elective classes and Hermione was taking absolutely all of them. Subsequently, she had a massive pile of homework already, but she insisted she was fine with it.

Harry left her to it, but rather than leave to find Neville he went deeper into the stacks, searching for books about demons. His confrontation with the Boggart-Crowley forced him to face the fact that the time on his demon deal was running out. Ten years felt like such a long time when he was seven; now there was only half that left, it felt like no time at all. He didn't want to die. He'd been so willing when he was younger, but now that he'd actually come close to death and he had a life that was worth living, he didn't want to lose it before he even turned eighteen. There was still the chance of using his Wish Magic to hide from the hellhounds, but he was more reluctant to do that than he had been a year ago. He had a life now; the idea of going back to the lonesome solitude of his childhood wasn't appealing.

So he searched the library for anything about demons, hoping he might find something that would void the death part of his contract, or at least put it off for a while. He found a few potentially helpful books, and checked them out to read privately.

The Slytherin Quidditch team had tryouts the next day. Harry and Tyler went to watch them because Cid was trying out. Harry sat with increasing bitterness, wishing he could be out there with them. Malfoy was trying out and just knowing that blonde git could do something that he couldn't made his blood hot with jealous anger. It was even worse when Malfoy got picked as the new Seeker. Cid lucked out on all positions.

The very next morning, a Firebolt arrived during breakfast for Malfoy, and Harry decided that he really, absolutely, truly hated him. Possibly the only person who hated him more was Oliver Wood, who slammed a fork into the table and stalked out the Great Hall while it was still quivering in the wood. It was no secret how desperate he was to win the Quidditch cup now that it was his final year at Hogwarts; Gryffindor hadn't held it in nearly a decade.

* * *

For nearly a month, Harry managed to avoid doing more than glance at Snape. He never offered answers in Potions and Snape never called on him, and when Snape circled the classroom inspecting their potions he would never give more than a moment's attention to Harry's. Harry was glad for it; his anger at the man wasn't abating.

But when they were brewing Swelling Solutions, Harry went to throw in a handful of pufferfish eyes and Snape grabbed his wrist to stop him. He snarled something about causing an explosion, but Harry barely heard it. Burning rage flooded through him at the contact. Snape was thrown clear across the classroom to crash into his desk and every cauldron in the room melted. His classmates shrieked, leaping backwards as potions in various stages of completion sloshed over their desks, then fled for the relative safety of the front of the classroom as the potions began to mix with each other and the ingredients left on desks, and started eating through wood or letting off disturbing smells and worrying puffs of smoke.

The sheer range of damage was enough to shock Harry out of the worst of his sudden anger. His own potion, now blending with Cid and Tyler's into a bubbling sludge that almost looked alive, was about to drip over and onto his feet. He stepped back and hurriedly Wished for all the mess to disappear.

At the front of the class, everyone stared at him. Snape was still on the floor, leant against his desk with blood dripping from his nose and burns on his hand. Harry didn't feel guilty about it.

Cid broke the silence. "What the fuck just happened?"

Jia whimpered, staring at her desk. "My books… my notes… my homework…"

Harry felt guilty then. He grimaced, looking around, and realised that he'd destroyed most of his classmates' belongings. It was pure luck that all of them had their wands in their pockets or tucked in holsters. Being the one that caused it, he figured he should sort it out and thought quickly.

"Forget that I attacked Snape. Forget that I vanished the potions without a wand. Believe you saw me use the Vanishing Spell. Believe that Snape told you the explosion was caused by tainted ingredients. It was an accident. Your belongings will be replaced by the school, at no cost to you. Go to your next class."

Their eyes glazed over momentarily, and then they all started to head towards the door. Only Snape remained where he was, unburnt hand covering his bloody face, eyes narrowed slightly as he watched the students leave. When Toni Kaidkin stopped to ask if she should get Madam Pomfrey, he tersely told her no, and she hurried out with the rest.

Tyler stopped at the door to look at Harry, who hadn't moved. "You coming?"

"I'll catch up."

Tyler shrugged and left. The door swung shut behind him. Harry looked at Snape. Snape lowered his hand and looked at the blood smeared on it.

"The headmaster won't replace their belongings without a very good explanation for what happened," he said with only a hint of strain in his otherwise conversational tone.

"I'll pay for it."

"Why did you do it?"

"I didn't mean to."

Snape lifted an incredulous gaze to him. "How could you not mean to cause this?"

Harry glanced away, shrugging. "I can't control it sometimes. My magic. If I get really emotional, it just… lashes out."

"That is problematic. You cannot let this happen again."

Harry looked back at him, anger bubbling inside him again, fortunately not sudden and hot enough to cause another accident. "Don't touch me again, and it won't."

"Very well," Snape said tersely. "Next time I'll let you melt only your own cauldron. At least the damage of one misbrewed Swelling Solution is easily fixed."

"Whatever," Harry muttered, and moved through the damaged room, but when he reached the door Snape spoke again.

"I am sorry."

Harry stopped, glanced back. Snape got to his feet with a grimace.

"I messed up, I know that. I assumed your uncle would respond to threats, especially after I broke into your house one Christmas. The police arrived before I could do much to them, but I thought it would be enough."

"It wasn't," Harry said, quietly angry. "It wasn't enough. Leaving me presents wasn't enough. Why did you do it?"

"They were giving you nothing. A child deserves some toys to play with, some gift on their birthday."

"Why'd you take me back?"

Snape shook his head. "I had no idea Albus was sending you back there last summer—"

"No," Harry interrupted. "The winter I got sick. Someone took me away and looked after me until I got better, and then they brought me back. That was you, wasn't it? Why did you take me back?"

"You were too ill to be left alone then, but I couldn't look after you, not properly. Albus told me there were protections on the house that he could put nowhere else."

Harry laughed bitterly. "Yeah, protections against Voldemort and the Death Eaters. I'd rather face them than my uncle."

"I'm sorry," Snape said softly. Maybe he meant it, but that wasn't enough. Harry couldn't forgive him just because he was sorry.

"I still hate you."

"I don't blame you. Hate me all you want, but try to control your anger. This cannot happen again. And please refrain from manipulating the memories of your classmates like that again."

Harry nodded stiffly, turned, and left.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

On Hallowe'en, Sirius Black broke into the castle.

The Slytherins had barely reached the common room after the feast before they were called back to the Great Hall. The rest of the houses were there, the Gryffindors talking in scared voices about how the Fat Lady, the portrait that guarded the entrance to their common room, had been slashed to pieces.

They had to sleep in the Great Hall that night. Dumbledore conjured a bunch of squishy purple sleeping bags for them to use and then left the prefects to watch over them while he and the other teachers went to search the castle for Black. Harry settled down with Cid and Tyler and spent half an hour discussing how Black might have got into the castle. It almost amused him to hear how the castle was meant to be almost impenetrable to outsiders, seeing as how he snuck in himself two years ago. But then, Black probably hadn't sold his soul to a demon for extreme amounts of power, and Harry hadn't had to sneak past Dementors to get in. Put like that, it made Black rather more terrifying than he'd seemed up to this point.

When Percy Weasley and Lisa Patterson, the head boy and girl, told them to settle down and put out the candles, Harry lay on his back and stared up at the starry ceiling above. He hadn't worried about Black before because there were only a handful of people who knew Harry was the Boy Who Lived. The scar remained hidden at all times and there probably wasn't anyone who expected the Boy Who Lived to be a scrawny, half-blind, epileptic little boy. They probably thought he was a strong, self-confident young man with a charming smile and skills with a wand that'd awe the common person.

But Sirius Black had spent twelve years in Azkaban and everyone said he was crazy; maybe he didn't care that he didn't know what Harry Potter looked like. It wasn't hard to figure out that he was the right age for a Hogwarts student so if Black was after him, it made sense that he might assume Hogwarts was where he'd find the person who defeated his lord and master. Black couldn't know which house Harry was in either so maybe he started with Gryffindor, which is where a self-confident young man with a charming smile would likely be placed, and planned to try breaking into the other houses next until he found the boy he simply thought was Harry Potter.

Black was all anyone talked about for the next few days. The Gryffindor portrait was replaced by one of a crazy knight called Sir Cadogan. The Gryffindors had nothing but complaints about him; apparently he changed their password often and irregularly and would challenge people to duels. It made Harry glad that Slytherin just had a wall.

McGonagall called Harry into her office one day with a terribly sombre expression on her face. He thought perhaps someone had died, but couldn't think of anyone that could have died that he'd need to know about. All his friends were fine, he'd seen them at lunch not an hour earlier.

"Mr Evans, I didn't want to have to tell you this, but there's no use hiding it any longer. Sirius Black is after you personally."

Harry frowned. "I know that. I mean, I figured he would be, I said that when he broke out."

She shook her head. "It's more than that. We have information that before Black broke out of prison, he was talking in his sleep." She paused then said quietly, " 'He's at Hogwarts.' "

"I don't understand."

"Black knows you're here. After the break in this weekend, it's painfully clear that he's targeting you directly. I want you to take precautions. Don't go anywhere alone, stay in the castle after dark."

"I can look after myself, professor."

"It would make _me_ feel better, Mr Evans. You're not on the Quidditch team and I know you're not in any clubs. I simply ask that you spend your evenings in Slytherin, or the library, instead of roaming the castle."

"Alright," he agreed.

They got a distraction from Black's break-in a week later in the form of the first Quidditch match of the season. Gryffindor versus Slytherin, as usual. The weather was nasty, pouring rain and heavy winds. Harry didn't envy the players, who he could barely see through the sheets of rain. He stood huddled with the other Slytherins, pretending to shiver whilst Wishing himself warm. He still had to let the rain soak him, but it wasn't so bad when he wasn't also freezing.

He never saw the Dementors. He felt the over-whelming cold sink into his bones, unaffected by his Wish Magic, and then the screaming started. It was louder than it was on the train, and he heard his uncle shouting over the top, and somewhere past that a woman—

" _Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!"_

" _Stand aside, you silly girl… stand aside, now…"_

" _Not Harry, please no, take me, kill me instead—"_

* * *

Harry woke up in the hospital wing feeling like he'd been trampled.

"You were," Cid told him. He sat in a chair between Harry's bed and the next one over, in which Tyler lay. "Everyone freaked the fuck out when the Dementors came and they started rushing to get away and you got a bit trampled when you started seizing. He threw up on you," he added, jerking a thumb at Tyler. "Then passed out."

"Sorry," Tyler apologised.

"I wish throwing up and passing out was all I did when they came near me. God, they're horrible."

"You're telling me," Tyler muttered.

"What about the match? Who won?"

"Gryffindor," Cid grumbled, "but Flint and Malfoy are asking for a rematch 'cause of the Dementors. We'll need it—they won by two hundred points—but I don't reckon Dumbledore'll allow it."

Cid stayed until Pomfrey kicked him out. She kept Harry and Tyler overnight and they were the only ones in the Wing for the night. Harry couldn't sleep. He kept remembering what he'd heard when the Dementors came on the pitch, that woman screaming, that voice…

He turned in his bed and peered across the dark ward. "Hey, Tyler, you awake?"

"Yeah."

"When the Dementors come near you, do you… hear things?"

Tyler didn't answer immediately. He stayed silent so long Harry thought he wasn't going to answer or had fallen asleep, but eventually he said in a quiet voice, "I remember my mum dying."

Harry inhaled sharply.

"It was a fire, when I saw six. Her cigarette lighter exploded. I saw the whole thing."

"That's why you can see the Thestrals."

"Yeah. What about you? What do you hear when the Dementors get close?"

He didn't really want to say, but Tyler told his so it was only fair.

"I remember when I was attacked as a kid, and… I can hear my mum dying too."

He was sure that's what the screaming was.

Tyler shifted in his bed, rolling onto his side to look over at him. "I thought your parents died when you were a baby."

"They did and I don't really remember it, but when the Dementors come near I can hear her screaming."

"Shit."

They said nothing else and eventually Harry slept, dreams disturbed by his dying mother.

Pomfrey insisted on keeping Harry all weekend, although she let Tyler go on Sunday morning. Harry complained, but as she pointed out, Tyler hadn't had a seizure or been trampled. Hermione and Neville came to visit him, which he appreciated when they talked about the Dementors and Hermione mentioned that several of the teachers shot silvery spells at them during the match, driving them back.

"You could ask one of them to teach you it," she suggested. Harry liked that idea.

"Can't you use your Wish Magic against them?" Neville asked.

"Not really. By the time they get close I can't really think properly to Wish anything, and then I have a seizure and I'm completely useless. Unless I was constantly Wishing for an anti-Dementor shield, but I'm not sure it'd really work."

Harry didn't go to any teachers, but he went to the library after classes on Monday and found books on Dementors. It didn't take long to find the spell Hermione and Neville mentioned: the Patronus Charm. He checked out the book with the most information on it and went to the Room of Requirement to practice. He repeated the incantation under his breath and turned to the centre of the room. For his happy memory he picked his first visit to the Lake District, remembered how content he was to sit on a boat in the middle of the lake with the sun shining down on him and only the wildlife to keep him company.

" _Expecto Patronum!_ "

It wasn't quite enough. He managed to create a silver mist, but it wouldn't form into a corporeal shape. He picked a different memory from the summer—visiting the British Museum and flying up to put Kiwi on top of the T-rex skeleton so he could take a picture—but that didn't work either. He tried again and again, using every memory he had of the summer, but nothing worked. The Patronus refused to fully form.

The Room provided him with a beanbag and he flopped onto it, staring at the ceiling as he thought. Why wouldn't it work? He had the power, the wand motions were simple enough, and he said the incantation perfectly, which meant the problem was his memories. Were they not happy enough? They were the only happy ones he had. There was nothing happy about his childhood with the Dursleys, nor his time on the streets. His secret year at Hogwarts was alright but it didn't generate anything happy, and his first real year he spent half of it unknowingly dying and the other half possessed so there was certainly nothing there to make him happy. This August was the only time he'd done anything fun…

That, he realised, was the problem. The summer was fun, but not happy. He thoroughly enjoyed visiting various places around the country, but it hadn't made him happy. There was always the underlying anger at Snape and a pervasive sense of loneliness that he was never really able to ignore. Kiwi didn't quite make up for not having any parents or friends to keep him company while he was out.

* * *

"Demons? Why are you looking at stuff about demons?"

Harry jumped, turning to glare at Tyler. It was nearly the end of November and he was in his dorm, books spread over his bed. "Don't sneak up on me like that."

"I didn't sneak."

"I'm half-blind. If you creep up on my left, it counts as sneaking. Give me that."

He snatched his notebook back from Tyler, who raised his eyebrows questioningly. "Demon deals? That's not for any classes, is it?"

"It's just research. I came across them in another book and wanted to know more. You know I'm a bookworm."

"Yeah, but usually it's history."

"This is history. There's a lot of speculation that notable historical figures made their success as the result of demon deals. Nicolas Flamel for one."

"Who?"

Harry gave him an incredulous look. "Nicolas Flamel. The only known creator of the Philosopher's Stone?"

"Oh, right, the immortality stone," Tyler said and Harry rolled his eyes. "Maybe I should make a demon deal, make myself super-intelligent so I never have to study again."

"That's not funny."

"Who's joking? Not all of us like pouring over books all the time. I swear you should have been in Ravenclaw."

"You'd sell your soul just so you can not study anymore?" Harry snapped, unable to keep the anger out of his voice at how stupid Tyler was being. "You think that's worth dying at twenty-two years old?"

Tyler frowned. "Why would that make me die at twenty-two?"

"Demons don't just buy your soul, they take it to hell. Ten years after you make a deal the hellhounds come and rip you up and tear you apart so you die and the demon can take your soul to hell and torture you for the rest of eternity."

"Shit. I wouldn't sell my soul for _that_."

The book thumped as Harry closed it and began gathering his stuff up. "Then don't joke about it."

"Jeez, relax. I only came to ask you something."

He had snapped a bit unnecessarily, Harry realised. "Sorry. What is it?"

"You said you were staying here for the holidays, right?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Pretty much no one else is except that fifth year Bletchley so I wanted to invite you over to mine."

Harry looked up in surprise. "For the whole holiday?"

"Yeah, sure. You want to?"

Harry nodded, but then remembered—"I have a hospital appointment on the twenty-second."

"Marcus can take you. Unless you need your foster parent. But they're Muggles, aren't they? Your appointments are at Saint Mungo's."

"Snape usually takes me," Harry admitted.

"So Marcus probably can, but you should ask about it," Tyler said. "But whatever, we can figure something out. You can still come."

"I'd like that," Harry smiled.

* * *

Harry didn't like having to talk to Snape, but McGonagall didn't have the information he needed to know about his healthcare.

"Marcus Fleetwood can take you," Snape told him. "It's just a check-up, you can see Kirith alone. I'll write to let her know beforehand."

He was nervous about going to Tyler's. The only time he'd been to a friend's house before was Hermione's before his first year, and that had only been for one night. What if he offended Tyler or Mr Fleetwood? What if Tyler decided he didn't want him there? What did you even do at a friend's house for three weeks?

But he did want to go, so he kept his fears to himself and on the last day of term he joined the rest of the school in riding the train back to London. Marcus Fleetwood, accompanied by Alex Stone's mother, picked up him, Tyler, and Alex and drove them all to Bath. Tyler lived on a small cul-de-sac of five large houses. Tyler and Marcus lived in one, the Stones opposite, and Muggles in the other three.

Tyler's bedroom was in the attic, which Harry thought was weird until he saw it. His vision of attics tended to be dusty, dark, and cramped, but Tyler's room was just as spacious as any other bedroom, a skylight in the roof providing plenty of light when it was day time. He had a TV sitting on top of a dresser with a video player and a HiFi. He had a lot of posters—the Weird Sisters, Kurt Cobain, various half-dressed men and women—and old comics of _Superman_ were scattered across the floor with copies of _The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle_. A copy of Gilderoy Lockhart's _Break With a Banshee_ was being used to keep the desk level.

Half of one wall was covered with photos—pictures from childhood birthday parties, outings, day-today life, the story of his lifetime splashed across the wall in a mix of motionless and moving pictures. Harry saw himself among them—pictures from the Slytherin common room, the dorms, the Hogwarts grounds—and felt an unexpected burst of affection. He'd never had a friend who would keep pictures of him before.

Harry was given a guest room on the floor below, but he and Tyler spent most of the night watching videos in Tyler's room and Harry ended up falling asleep on his floor. Neither of them were particularly happy to get woken up early the next morning by Alex Stone barging into the room. Judging by Tyler's reaction, it wasn't an uncommon occurrence during the holidays.

"C'mon, we're going to Charlie's house. I have news."

"Tell us later," Tyler groaned, then yelped when Alex pulled him out of his bed. "Alex!"

Alex grinned unapologetically. "Up!"

"Who's Charlie?" Harry asked, getting up from the floor.

"Our friend, a Muggle, she lives next door to me," Alex told him, throwing open Tyler's wardrobe and picking out some clothes to throw at him. Harry left him to bully Tyler into getting up and dressed, and went to the guest room where he'd left his belongings to fetch his own clothes.

Ten minutes later, they were out the house and across the street. They hadn't seen Marcus on their way out and Tyler just left a quick message with his house elf to say where they were going. At Charlie's house, Harry was briefly introduced to Mrs Bennett, a broad woman with lots of curly blonde hair, and dressed primly in a skirt suit. She didn't look very impressed to see them.

"I don't think she likes me," Harry muttered as they climbed the stairs.

Tyler yawned. "Don't worry, she doesn't like anyone."

Charlie was nothing like her mother. Slim, her hair brown and sleek, and dressed in artfully ripped jeans and a black and pink t-shirt. Her room was almost entirely covered with pictures ripped out of magazines and her bed was half-covered with stuffed animals. A doggy bed sat in one corner and a Jack Russell leapt out of it when Harry, Tyler, and Alex entered, yapping excitedly. Alex bent to scratch its ears and Tyler slouched over to an inflatable chair and dropped into it.

"Hey, Charlie. This is Harry, he goes to our school. Harry, Charlie."

"Hi, Harry. Nice to meet you. That's Sammy," she said, waving to the dog, who barked at the sound of his name.

"Hey. Hi, Sammy."

"So what's this news you dragged me out of bed for?" Tyler asked Alex.

Alex looked up from Sammy with a broad grin. "I'm gonna be a brother!"

Charlie squealed. "Your mum's pregnant? That's so cool!"

"How is that cool?" Tyler asked. "Have you seen babies? They're noisy and messy."

"Oh don't be a berk, Tyler. This is great news, Alex! Is it a boy or a girl?"

"Don't know yet. They won't find out until Mum's next check up. I hope it's a girl. I'd love a little sister."

Harry congratulated Alex and the four of them talked until Charlie suggested they go out. They took out Sammy and ended up walking along a river, Alex and Charlie a little ahead of Tyler and Harry, while Sammy charged around snapping at birds and tripping over his own feet.

"That's pretty cool that Alex is going to be a brother," Harry remarked to Tyler, who grunted. "You don't think so?"

"I just don't see what's so great about it. Babies are annoying."

"It won't be a baby forever."

"Yeah, well. What do they need another kid for anyway? They've got Alex."

"That doesn't mean they don't want more."

Tyler just grunted again.

"Are you jealous?"

"No! Why would I be jealous?"

Harry shrugged. "Marcus doesn't have a wife and he's pretty old so he can't have any kids to give you a brother or sister."

"I'm not jealous. I don't want some stupid baby sister screaming all the time. Hey, guys, I'm freezing my arse off, can we head back now?" he called, and Harry just smiled.

His nerves over the holiday soon faded and he had a fun three weeks. They spent a lot of time hanging out with Alex and Charlie; the kids all had standing invitations to one another's houses and often walked in with barely a knock to warn they were coming. They would roam the neighbourhood and walk up by the river or take a bus into town with only a brief yell to their parents to say where they're going, or in Tyler's case just leaving a message with his house elf. Marcus worked odd hours and Harry never actually saw him much.

His appointment with Kirith went well. She sighed over his two close encounters with Dementors, but was otherwise satisfied with things. She said she'd see him again in another six months and, if all was well then, he could drop to just yearly check-ups.

A few days after the new year, the four of them were hanging in out Charlie's tree house, a massive thing built around the oak at the end of her garden. It had been their playhouse since they were five and was a strict No Parents zone. There were old drawings scrawled on the walls, but the teen magazines and rude words overlying old drawings betrayed the owner's increased age.

Charlie and Alex were arguing about football while Tyler and Harry just listened when the trapdoor opened abruptly. Charlie sat up.

"Dad! You're not—Johnny!"

She scrambled up and across the tree house to hug the boy that just climbed into the treehouse. Tall and athletic, with more gel in his hair than Draco Malfoy, he hugged her back and then kissed her.

"What the _fuck_?"

The two broke apart. Charlie blushed. Tyler was staring at them with a look of absolute horror.

"Uh oh," Alex muttered.

Harry leant towards him and asked in a whisper. "Who's that?"

"Johnny Nevins, he was a year above us in primary school. He used to bully us a lot."

Tyler got to his feet. "What the fuck is he doing here?"

Charlie glared at him, but her cheeks were still red. "He's my boyfriend. Don't be rude."

" _Rude?_ He's a fucking twat!"

Tyler had been spending way too much time around Cid.

"Shut up, Tyler! You don't know him."

"I know he used to pick on us all the time."

Johnny laughed. "You're still sore about that, Ty? It was just a bit of fun."

"Shut up, I'm not talking to you."

"Good," Johnny said, lip curling. "Because I don't associate with dorks."

Tyler looked as if he might hit him. Alex clearly thought so because he grabbed Tyler's arm. "Don't start a fight."

"Yeah, Ty, don't start a fight," Johnny mocked. "I'll only kick your arse."

Tyler reached for the pocket where Harry knew he kept his wand during school, but it wasn't there and he grit his teeth angrily. Johnny smirked and turned away dismissively.

"You shouldn't hang out with these dweebs, babe. We're all going to Keith's, his parents have gone out and Sasha got a crate of beer. You coming?"

"You can't drink," Alex blurted even as Charlie nodded enthusiastically. "You're not old enough."

Johnny laughed. Charlie rolled her eyes.

"It's not gonna kill me to have a few beers. God, you're such a pathetic baby sometimes."

She might as well have slapped him, he looked so hurt. Tyler wrenched his arm free but then took Alex's hand and pulled him over to the trap door. "If you weren't a girl," he said as Alex climbed down, "I'd hit you for that. C'mon, Harry."

"Goodbye, dorks!" Johnny called after them as Harry followed Tyler out the trap door.

"Johnny," Charlie scolded, but without much heat, and then they were out of hearing range. Alex and Tyler were already stalking across the garden. Harry hurried to catch up.

"I can't believe her," Tyler fumed as they left the Bennetts' house. "How could she go out with him? How could she talk to Alex like that? Bitch."

"Tyler, it's fine," Alex said. "I don't care if she thinks I'm a baby. At least I won't become an alcoholic."

"She's supposed to be our friend. God. If I had my wand I would have hexed them both."

"Then you'd get expelled. Look, forget about Charlie. Let's just go back to yours and watched that ninja video you got for Christmas."

"Fine," Tyler grumbled, but he remained in a grumpy mood for the rest of the day.

* * *

When they returned to Hogwarts, Harry left Tyler and Alex with the other second years and went to find Hermione and Neville. He'd hardly spent any time with them last term and the train was a good place to hang out.

It took him less than fifteen minutes to figure out they were keeping something from him. Hermione talked too much and Neville wouldn't quite meet his gaze.

"What is it?"

Hermione started. "What's what?"

"What are you not telling me? I know there's something."

"It's nothing. It doesn't matter."

"Then why won't Neville look me in the eye?"

Hermione and Neville exchanged a look. Harry glared at them both.

"We heard something," Hermione admitted hesitantly, "when we were in Hogsmeade the day before term ended."

"Okay. What was it?"

"It was about Sirius Black."

"And?"

Neville stared at his shoes and Hermione looked like she'd rather have all her teeth pulled out without anaesthetic than tell him. Harry felt his irritation grow.

"Well?" he demanded.

They told him.

The windows exploded.

* * *

He didn't touch dinner that night. He sat at the Slytherin table, staring at his empty plate, not even touching his knife and fork. He didn't pay attention to the conversations around him. Everything seemed dulled, distant. He didn't notice the concerned looks Cid shot him or Tyler's worried questions.

Sirius Black had betrayed his parents. He was Harry's godfather, he was James' best friend, and he had killed them.

When the meal was over, he stood up with everyone else and walked back to Slytherin on auto-pilot.

"What's wrong with you? Scared the Dementors will get you again?"

He was forced to stop in the middle of the common room when Malfoy planted himself in the way. He looked up at the blond boy, whose smirk faded a little at the utterly blank expression on Harry's face.

"Fuck off, Malfoy."

Malfoy's eyes narrowed. Harry's voice was as toneless as his face was expressionless, but Malfoy wasn't smart enough to see it for what it was. "Don't talk to me like that, you little tosser."

"I said FUCK OFF!"

There were shrieks as the fire in the hearth flared suddenly, sending a blast of heat rushing through the room. Malfoy jumped, glanced at it then back at Harry.

"What the hell is wrong with you?!"

Instead of answering, Harry turned around and walked out the common room.

"Hey!" Cid called. "It's almost curfew, where you going?"

He didn't answer.

The library was shut when he reached it, but a Wish had the lock sliding open. He slipped inside, completely invisible, and went straight to the Charms section to pick out the first book he could find on tracking spells.

Three hours later he shut another book and returned it to its shelf. All the tracking spells said the same thing—either it had to be pre-applied, like the pendant McGonagall got from Snape in the summer, or required something personal, like blood or hair. He had no way of finding anything of Black's, but he wasn't about to let the restrictions of wand magic stop him.

This particular idea needed testing first. He took a blank sheet of parchment from Madam Pince's desk and cut out two arrows about the size of his palm. He wrote Hermione's name in the arrow head of one and Black's in the other. He pocketed Black's and held Hermione's on the flat of his hand.

"Point me to Hermione Granger," he ordered it, and it spun to point to his left. He realised the flaw in his plan, thought for a moment, and then said, "Direct me to Hermione Granger."

This time the arrow pointed towards the doors of the library.

It guided him all the way to Gryffindor Tower. Satisfied, Harry pocketed it and took out the arrow with Black's name. Anger bubbled in his chest as he looked at it and the memory of his mother screaming as she died only served to make his decision firmer.

"Direct me to Sirius Black."

He followed it out the castle and across the grounds, barely taking his gaze from the arrow, and only when he felt the prickle of cold across his skin did he realise the terrible decision he made. He froze in mid step, lifting his head to stare at the Dementors floating eerily along the boundaries of the school, then he turned and flew back to the castle, his vengeance momentarily forgotten as he thought only that he needed to get as far away from the soul sucking monsters as possible.

Back inside the Entrance Hall, he looked down at the paper arrow, clenched his fist around it, then vanished it as he walked towards the dungeons. An empty, hollow sort of feeling settled in his stomach and he felt like he was failing his parents by not going after the person responsible for the deaths, but he couldn't get past the Dementors. He wanted vengeance, but not enough to lose his soul over it.

But he promised himself that if he ever had the chance, he'd kill Sirius Black himself.

* * *

Harry's anger faded over the following weeks, just because it was exhausting to be that angry all the time, but his hatred didn't. After the summer, he hadn't thought he could hate anyone more than Snape, but even his resentment at that cooled in the face of what he felt towards Black.

He threw himself into his demon research in the meantime, even sneaking into the Restricted Section to have a peek at the books there. He didn't find anything about breaking deals, but he did find some interesting information on binding demons to service. He was almost tempted to do it and send one after Black, but he wanted to face the man himself. He was also wary of interacting with demons again; he couldn't make any more deals, which made him worry what else they could get from him. If there was one thing he learnt from all his research, it was that working with demons inevitably caused trouble for the human.

At the end of January, Hermione got into a duel with Ron Weasley in the middle of the Entrance Hall. Harry pushed through the crowd until he reached Neville and leant in to ask what it was about.

"Crookshanks ate Scabbers," Neville said distractedly, shifting from foot to foot as he watched. "Oh, she's going to get in so much trouble…"

"Who ate what?"

"Crookshanks, Hermione's cat. He ate Ron's rat, Scabbers."

McGonagall came storming in then and broke up the duel, assigning detention to both of them. Hermione stormed off afterwards without coming to speak to Neville and Harry.

"I thought we weren't even allowed rats," Harry said to Neville as the crowd dispersed. "My letter said cat, owl, or toad."

Neville shrugged. "He's had it since first year and apparently his brother Percy had it for five years before that so I guess they got special permission."

"Lucky it didn't get eaten before now. It was probably just a matter of time."

"Maybe," Neville agreed. "I'm going to catch up with Hermione, make sure she's okay. I'll see you later."

Harry nodded and they parted ways.

The Slytherins had their match against Hufflepuff at the beginning of the term and only narrowly defeated them, but at the start of February Gryffindor wiped the pitch against Ravenclaw, almost guaranteeing them the cup. They would have to lose horrifically against Hufflepuff for Slytherin to take it, and the chances of that happening were slimmer than a sheet of parchment.

That night, Sirius Black broke into Gryffindor tower.

When Harry heard about it the next morning, he was furious. He wasn't sure he believed that Ron Weasley had bravely fought Black off at severe risk of his own life, but Black had been in the castle, within his reach, and Harry had missed his chance to get him. He was so angry he couldn't even feel sorry for Neville, who was in trouble for writing down the passwords that Black used to get into the tower. Even when Neville's grandmother sent a screeching howler at breakfast, Harry only felt a thin sliver of pity.

He made another tracking arrow that night. This time it took him in the opposite direction, towards the Forbidden Forest. When he reached the edge, he stopped, wondering if he should carry on or not. He didn't know how far around the school the Dementors were set up, whether they were just at the gates and boundary of the grounds or if they were in the forest as well. It'd make sense, he thought, even if the forest was supposed to be filled with all manner of dangerous creatures that'd get to Black before he reached the school grounds.

He turned away. It was too risky to go in when there could be Dementors, but he did get an idea. He went back to Slytherin and wrote under Black's name: 000 feet.

"Direct me to Sirius Black," he wished. "Show me the distance to Sirius Black."

The arrow spun in his hand, but the number remained at 000. He tried several different phrasings and words, but the numbers wouldn't change and he threw it down in annoyance, then picked it up and burnt it because he didn't need anyone finding it lying around.

The solution to his problem came to Harry at breakfast on the morning of the next Hogsmeade weekend. He upset his pumpkin juice in his rush to get up from the table and run out the Great Hall after Neville and Hermione.

"Guys! Hold up!"

They paused, turning to face him. "You alright?" Hermione asked.

"You guys are going to Hogsmeade, right?"

"No."

Harry's face fell. "What? Why not?"

"I'm not allowed," Neville said morosely. "Since Black broke in…"

"I don't really need anything, so I said I'd stay and keep him company," Hermione added. "Why?"

"I need some Interactive Ink _really_ badly. Please can you go and get me some? I'll give you the money for it and I'll keep Neville company."

"What do you need it so urgently for?"

"Just a project I'm working on. I'll pay you for going if you want."

"I don't mind," Neville said.

"Please, Hermione."

"Alright. I need to go back to Gryffindor for my cloak though."

Harry went back to Slytherin to grab some money from his trunk then met Hermione back in the Entrance Hall. When she was gone—now with a shopping list that included the ink, a quill, and several varieties of sweets—Harry and Neville headed out to take a walk around the lake, chatting and catching up. Neville was worried about Hermione; the strain of the work from taking so many elective classes was finally getting to her. Apparently she spent every evening sat in the common room surrounded by books and snapping sharply at anyone who distracted her.

"I've tried convincing her to drop some classes—she says she doesn't really like Divination and she doesn't need to take Muggle Studies—but you know what she's like. She insists she's fine."

"She probably won't admit she can't handle it until she collapses from overworking or something," Harry said.

"Exactly and I don't want that to happen, but I don't know what to do."

Unfortunately Harry didn't have any suggestions for him either.

Hermione was back within a couple of hours and she found them sitting by the lake still.

"Hermione, you're brilliant and I owe you one. Thank you."

She smiled but it was strained. Her eyes are dark with shadows.

"Hermione, are you alright? Neville says you're getting kind of overwhelmed from all your work."

She tutted. "I'm fine, really. I do have a lot of work but it's nothing I can't handle. Honestly."

Hermione and Neville headed off to Gryffindor and Harry returned to Slytherin. He sat on his bed in the dorm, curtains pulled shut, and made another tracking arrow, this time for Tyler, just to test it. This time when he ordered it to show him the distance, the numbers changed to read 122 feet, and he let out a delighted laugh. He pushed his curtains aside and climbed off the bed, heading out the dorm and through the common room, watching the number drop as he left. The arrow twisted and he turned left down the corridor, rounded a corner, went a small distance—

And then stopped. He'd glanced up to check he wasn't walking into anything and saw Tyler, ten feet down, half standing in an alcove and kissing Toni Kaidkin. Harry gaped at them.

They broke apart. Toni was red in the face, but grinning happily, twirling a single rose between her fingers. Harry couldn't see Tyler's expression, but he heard the other boy speak.

"So, do you want to walk 'round the lake with me?" he asked, pitching his voice lower than normal. Like most of the boys in their year, his voice had broken, but was still prone to pitching high again sometimes and he was clearly trying to avoid that.

Toni giggled and nodded. Tyler took her hand, looking a bit awkward as he did it, then they stepped out of the alcove and started towards Harry, who quickly started moving so it didn't look like he'd been spying. Toni went even more red when she saw him and hurriedly snatched her hand from Tyler's, hiding the rose behind her back. Tyler looked a bit annoyed by this, but just nodded to Harry as they passed.

Harry waited until they'd turned the corner then stopped. He looked at his tracking arrow, watched the numbers steadily rise until they reached triple digits again, then he went back to his dorm. It was empty when he got there and he vanished the arrow and made a new one for Black. The numbers changed and then settled, suggesting Black was stationary, and Harry put it aside to dig out his copy of _Hogwarts: A History_ to find out how large the school grounds were. Afterwards, he added an extra digit and a couple of decimal places, just for added accuracy, and tucked it in his pocket.

The door opened and Cid looked in, casting his gaze over the room but standing in the doorway. "You know where Tyler is?" he asked when he saw only Harry.

"Um…" he said, and then blurted, "I saw him kissing Toni."

Cid's jaw dropped. He stepped into the room, letting the door swing shut behind him. "You fucking kidding me?"

Harry shook his head. He wasn't sure it was right to talk about catching your friend kissing someone, but he'd been so startled by it. "I saw them in the corridor. I think they're going out now."

"Fuck! I can't believe he kissed someone before me!"

Harry didn't know what to say to that. Cid came over, throwing himself across Harry's bed. "You're sure it was them?"

Harry nodded. "He gave her a rose, too. They've gone for a walk around the lake."

Cid snorted. "How romantic," he mocked. "But I suppose girls like that sort of thing."

Harry had no idea.

"You're not allowed to get a girlfriend before me."

"I don't want one," Harry told him. "Why not though?"

"Because. If you can get a girlfriend before me then it's just sad. No offence or nothing."

"None… wait, are you saying I'm too ugly for a girlfriend?"

"No," Cid said quickly.

"You are!" Harry punched his shoulder. "Arsehole. I could get a girlfriend if I wanted. _I_ got a Valentine's card last year."

"I'm not saying you're ugly, you're just…"

Harry raised his eyebrows. "What?"

"You're a nerd," Cid said bluntly. "A history nerd. It's just not cool, okay? I realise I'm not as loved among the woman as I should be, which I will fix just as soon as I figured out what the problem is, but—"

"I think it's the swearing."

Cid blinked. "The fuck?"

"It's vulgar. I mean, I don't care, but I think the girls don't like it so much."

"Tyler swears."

"Not as much as you."

Cid thought about this, frowning heavily, then shook his head. "No, must be something else. I'll figure it out. Anyway, as I was saying you're a nerd and I'm not, so if you get a girlfriend before I do, it makes me look really pathetic. So don't get a girlfriend, okay?"

Somewhat bemused, Harry just nodded. He'd meant what he'd said, so it wasn't like he was putting himself out by agreeing.

He sat back, stroking Tyler's cat Aurora when she came up looking for attention, and half-listened as Cid regaled all the bonuses of having a girlfriend (kissing and boobs mostly, Harry gathered, although he didn't really see the appeal of either). It was nearly lunch when the door opened and Tyler came in. Instantly Cid was up and across the room. Tyler stopped short, eying him warily.

"You're going out with Toni?"

Tyler flicked irritated eyes briefly across to Harry, who shrugged apologetically, then looked back at Cid. "Yeah. It's no big deal."

"You kissed her! That's a big fucking deal."

A smile slowly spread across Tyler's face then. "Yeah," he said, sounding both embarrassed and pleased now.

"What was it like? Did you use tongue?" Cid demanded.

"Not yet."

"So? What was it like?"

Tyler shrugged. "Nice, I guess. Like I said, there was no tongue, so it's not like it's a big thing. Ask me again when I've really snogged her. Let's go to lunch."

* * *

Over the next few months, Harry checked his tracking arrow every so often, but Black stayed well away from the castle now, presumably deciding it was too risky to try and break in so soon after his last attempt.

He had to keep it hidden from people so they didn't think he was crazy, and he nearly got caught watching it a couple of times. One such instance happened at the start of the Easter holidays when he was standing in a corner of the Entrance Hall, staring at the numbers as they got gradually smaller. He really hoped Black was going to make another break-in attempt; the moment he was within the school boundaries, Harry would be after him.

"You're never going to believe what Hermione did."

Harry almost jumped out of his skin. He shoved the arrow into his pocket and turned to Neville, breathing hard and glaring. "Don't sneak up on me like that!"

"Sorry!"

"Give me a bloody heart attack," he grumbled, but Neville looked earnestly apologetic so he couldn't hold a grudge. "What did Hermione do?"

"She walked out of Divination. In the middle of class!"

"What? Hermione? _Our_ Hermione?"

Neville grinned. "I know."

"Why?"

"Professor Trelawney's been predicting my death all year—don't worry, McGonagall says she always predicts someone's death—and Hermione's always said Divination was a load of rubbish ever since our first class. She finally got sick of it, walked right out."

"Blimey," Harry said, impressed. "Go Hermione."

For the second years, the holiday meant they were finally able to pick their elective classes for next year. It was easy enough for Harry; he already knew he wanted to take Arithmancy and Ancient Runes. He was interested in Care of Magical Creatures, too, but the upper years had only bad things to say about Hagrid's teaching methods and Harry didn't really want to get mauled by a hippogriff like Malfoy. He didn't need Muggle Studies, and almost everyone said Divination was a pile of rubbish, so he settled for just the two.

The rest of his year mates got more stressed about it. Tyler resorted to Ip Dip Sky Blue and ended up with Divination and Ancient Runes, but decided Ancient Runes would be too much work so picked Care of Magical Creatures instead because Cid was taking it. This decision led to the end of his relationship with Toni, who'd apparently wanted him to take all the same classes as her. Tyler didn't seem too bothered by their split.

Cid wasn't bothered by Hagrid as a teacher—in fact, he was of the opinion that hippogriffs that attacked Malfoy were excellent creatures to study—but wrote to his parents about what else to take. His mother told him to take three subjects and recommended Ancient Runes and Arithmancy, so he settled for just Divination.

"Do you always do what your mother tells you not to?" Harry asked him.

"Yeah, most of the time."

"Why?"

Cid shrugged. "Dad says it's because I take after him and he could never manage to do what she told him to, either. Mum says it's just because I'm difficult."

* * *

At the start of the summer term, Remus caught Fred and George Weasley putting Impervius Spells on the third floor toilets, an old but classic trick. The Marauder's Map fell from Fred's pocket as he left the bathroom, with Gryffindor down by ten points, and Remus recognised it immediately, even deactivated. He took it, smiling, and spent a while going over it with a sad nostalgia.

The twins sought him out a few days later and he affected a look of nonchalance as they stood across from him in his office.

"Sir, the other day when you caught us…" Fred trailed off.

"Improving the boys toilets," George offered.

"Right, improving them. I dropped a bit of parchment. Did you notice it by any chance?"

"I did find a piece near that bathroom," Remus said, "but it was old and folded so many times I thought it might fall apart, so I vanished it."

The horrified expressions on the twins' faces were enough to make Remus' cheek muscles hurt with the effort it took to not laugh at them. He opened his desk drawer and pulled out the Map, and George slumped with relief while Fred let out a sigh.

"I'm well aware of what this map is, boys, and in all seriousness, you should have handed it in after Sirius Black first broke into the castle," Remus told them, tone severe now he'd had his fun. "I'm astounded that you didn't do so when your own brother was put in danger the last time someone left information lying around the castle. I'm sure you understand I cannot give this back."

They grumbled a bit, but nodded and slunk out the office. Remus hadn't been lying about the danger of them leaving such a thing lying about the castle, but he was also being selfish. Over the next few weeks, he took the Map out regularly and just watched it. He wasn't sure what he was hoping for, wasn't sure if he wanted to see Sirius' name on the old parchment on not. He didn't know what he'd do if he did see it. He hadn't turned on Sirius yet by informing Dumbledore about his Animagus form, but if he saw Sirius' name on the Map, if he knew Sirius was inside the school… he honestly didn't know if he'd go to Dumbledore or hunt down Sirius himself.

* * *

The final Quidditch match took place on the first Saturday of the new term and Gryffindor won it by a mile. Oliver Wood actually cried with joy right on the Quidditch pitch. He looked so happy that Harry, at least, didn't have the heart to resent him and his team for taking the cup.

A week later, Harry checked the tracking arrow and the distance marker read 1987.24 feet—within the boundaries of the school

It was a Saturday, just after lunch. Harry was in his dorm but he leapt up, ignoring Cid's look of surprise as he rushed out the dorm, through the common room and into the corridor. He raced up to the Entrance Hall then paused, checking the arrow, before heading out onto the grounds.

He made himself invisible as he left the castle; he wanted to be able to sneak up on Black. But as he followed the arrow towards the Forbidden Forest and the numbers got smaller and smaller, he wondered if it was broken. It was a sunny afternoon and there were plenty of students milling about the grounds. A group of sixth years were playing five-a-side Quidditch on the pitch, and Harry found Tyler kissing Isabelle Walker, one of their Hufflepuff yearmates, behind the stands, but if the arrow was correct then Black was just beyond the edge of the forest, close enough to be seen if someone passed by. Was he using an invisibility cloak? It would make sense.

Giving Tyler and Isabelle a wide birth, he crept into the trees. When he saw the dog, half hidden under a bush as it watched the Quidditch players, he paused but didn't think much of it. It could easily be a stray from Hogsmeade or someone's dog that ran off, but the arrow pointed straight at it. At first he thought something went wrong with the magic, that the arrow was definitely malfunctioning, and then it all clicked into place. Black wasn't using an invisibility cloak, he was an Animagus. It explained why no one could find him and if the Dementors didn't affect animals it would explain how Black escaped Azkaban.

Harry waited until the dog wriggled out from under the bush and turned to head further into the forest, and then pounced. The dog yelped as Harry wrapped his arms around its neck, clinging tightly to hold on as it struggled to get out of his grip.

"I know who you are," Harry said, which made the dog fight harder. "I'm going to kill you for betraying my parents. Be still!"

The dog froze but whimpered, making panicked little noises. Harry let go then spun as he heard a crack of twigs.

"Who's here? C'mon now, yer know students ain't meant ter be in the forest. Out with yer."

Harry made a Wish and the dog turned into a small rubber ball. He grabbed it and kept himself hidden and silent as he crept out the forest before Hagrid came across him.

He didn't make himself visible until he was back at the castle, at which point he stopped in an empty corridor to wonder what the hell he was doing. He had a ball in his pocket that was really a dog who might very well be Sirius Black, mass murderer and escaped convict. It was absurd and a manic giggle escaped him. Before he knew it, he was leant against the wall, bent over and clutching at his stomach as he laughed.

A little while later he wiped tears from his face and tried to ignore the twist in his gut as the humour of situation faded and he realised that he had no idea what he was supposed to do now. He thought for a bit, then went to the Room of Requirement. It provided him with cage in the middle of an otherwise empty room and he put the ball inside it, locked the cage and the room, and then pointed his wand at the ball.

" _Finite Incantatem_."

The ball turned back into the dog, which turned into a slightly dazed Sirius Black, lying in a heap on the floor, and Harry inhaled sharply because until then he never really believed it.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

"Who are you?" Black croaked in a voice hoarse from disuse, looking at Harry through the bars of the cage. "Where am I?"

"My name's Harry Evans, but you probably know me better as Harry Potter."

He let his scar show and Black scrambled right up to the bars, pressing his face forward to stare at Harry. "Harry? That's really you?"

"Yes, and now I'm going to kill you for betraying my parents."

"I didn't betray them, Harry."

Harry made a Wish and the bars crackled with electricity. Black yelped painfully, jerking away from them.

"Don't you lie to me. You killed them!"

"I did," Black said, but not gloatingly, not boasting and prideful, just a sad statement of admittance. "I got them killed, but I swear on their graves that I never betrayed them. I wouldn't do that to Lily and James. Let me explain. Five minutes, Harry. That's all I ask. Five minutes."

Harry gave him that, and when Black finished talking about Peter Pettigrew and secret Animagi, all he asked was, "Can you prove it?"

He listened, but he didn't believe it. Why should he? It sounded like the perfect story to get him to trust Black, leaving him open to the same betrayal his parents suffered.

"Do you really think I'd have spent twelve years in Azkaban if I could prove it?" Black replied, which was a perfectly viable point, but didn't help him convince Harry. "I need to catch the rat."

"Which you think belongs to Ron Weasley."

Black nodded. "Can you help me catch it?"

"Weasley's rat is dead. Crookshanks ate him, so even if you're telling the truth, you can't prove it."

"He's not dead. The cat didn't eat him. Pettigrew faked his death again."

"How would you know?"

"I talked to the cat," Black said like that explained everything. When Harry stared at him, Black added, "When I transform, I can communicate with other animals. Some of them."

"Uh huh."

"Harry, help me find the rat. Help me prove my innocence."

It wouldn't hurt, not really. If he didn't find the rat, it would prove, beyond a doubt, that Black was guilty and deserved to die. If he did find the rat, he'd kill Pettigrew instead and Black would be free to go.

"If he's really alive, I can find him, but I need to go back to my dorm to do it," Harry said.

"Let me out. I'll go back to the forest, wait there for you."

Harry shook his head. "I'm not letting you out of my sight. I'll transfigure you back into a ball again and take you with me."

"That's how you got me in here?"

"Yeah, and if you're lying, I'll turn you into a stone and throw you into the lake."

"Definitely Lily's son," Black said with a ghost of a smile. Harry narrowed his eyes, made a Wish, and Black was gone, replaced by a red rubber ball. It flew out the cage and into Harry's hand and he made sure his scar was hidden again before leaving the room.

* * *

Remus noticed them on the map just as they reached Slytherin house, which he checked periodically just to keep an eye on Harry, and any thoughts of taking on Sirius himself fled. If he'd been alone then maybe, but not when Sirius was so close to Harry that their names overlapped. Remus might not have been as close to Lily and James in the last few years of the war as Sirius and Peter were—something that saddened him immensely—but he was the only one left that could keep an eye out for Harry. Severus wasn't an option; it was evident to anyone that Harry hated the man.

Hoping they wouldn't be too late, Remus rushed to his floo and summoned Dumbledore.

* * *

Cid was gone from the dorm when Harry got back, but Orion Devaux and Stuart Travis were in there. Stuart nodded a greeting when Harry entered. Orion ignored him.

Harry quickly dug out his Interactive Ink and made himself a new arrow, scribbling in _Peter Pettigrew_ and the numbers. As soon as he made a Wish, it spun in his palm and pointed towards the door, the number reading 1976.48 feet.

Before he could start to move, McGonagall's voice echoed through the school.

" _All staff and students will go immediately to the Great Hall. All staff and students to the Great Hall immediately please."_

He cursed, stuffed the tracking arrow in his pocket, and yanked his bed curtains open. Orion and Stuart looked as confused as he was as they headed for the door, but when they opened it Snape stood on the other side.

"Out," he ordered them then flicked his eyes to Harry. "Not you."

Harry grit his teeth, resisting the urge to tell Snape to stuff it, but then McGonagall, Dumbledore, and Lupin filed in behind him. Orion and Stuart lingered outside, looking in curiously, but Dumbledore ordered them away and shut the door. Lupin had a bit of parchment that he looked at and then pocketed before drawing his wand.

"He's in here somewhere."

"Who is?" Harry asked.

Snape lifted his own wand. " _Homenum revelio_."

Nothing happened. Lupin frowned and took out his bit of parchment again.

"He should be here."

"I think he is," Dumbledore said quietly, gaze on Harry. "Harry, have you met a large black dog today?"

Harry said nothing, glancing between them.

"Ah, I think that's a yes. Harry, if Black's threatening you, we'll keep you safe. Just reveal him to us."

"Then what?"

"We'll hand him over to the Dementors like he deserves," Snape answered, and Harry thought he looked almost eager at the thought.

"He didn't do it."

"Do what?"

"He didn't—" Harry glanced at Lupin, the only one who didn't know his identity, but Black said he was a friend of Harry's parents so he carried on. "He didn't betray my parents. It wasn't him that killed those Muggles."

"We should check him for a Confundus Charm," Snape said. "Possibly even the Imperius."

"I'm not cursed! He didn't do it; it was Peter Pettigrew."

"Harry, Peter Pettigrew's dead," Lupin said.

Harry pulled the tracking arrow out of his pocket. "He's not and I can prove it."

"That means nothing," Snape said when Harry explained the arrow. "That could merely direct us to what's left of his dead body."

Harry shook his head. "That distance is within school grounds."

Lupin came over to look at the numbers then inspected his bit of parchment. Harry watched, intrigued, as he moved the map to the edge of the grounds where Pettigrew should be.

"Where can I get one of these?"

"It's one of a kind," Lupin smiled, and then it vanished. "My god… he's there. He's in Hagrid's hut."

"Very well," Dumbledore said, immediately ready for action. "Harry, give us Black. We will deal with this."

Harry shook his head. "He stays with me until I've seen Pettigrew for myself. I don't trust you."

Lupin looked shocked. "You can trust the headmaster, Harry."

"No, I can't. Are we going?"

"Am I missing something here?" Lupin asked when none of the other teachers objected to Harry accompanying them.

"When are you not?" Snape sneered, and swept out the door.

"We will explain later," Dumbledore said. "For now, we have a situation to deal with."

Everyone was gone from the common room now and they moved quickly through the quiet school. There was a hum of noise coming from the Great Hall when they reached it, and McGonagall left them to go and explain what was happening to the rest of the school. Or at least, give an altered explanation of what was happening.

Meanwhile the others approached Hagrid's hut.

"If we all go in at once, Pettigrew will flee," Snape pointed out.

"So charm the hut," Harry said. "Trap him inside."

Dumbledore drew his wand and did exactly that. "Severus, Remus, stay here. Harry, with me."

Harry had never been inside Hagrid's hut before, which had been rebuilt after burning down during Harry's year in hiding. Despite being a new building, it had an air of age to it and looked thoroughly lived in. There was a stink of animal all around, and everything inside it—furniture and crockery and other household items—was four times as big as they would normally be.

The tracking arrow pointed Harry to a milk jug large enough for baby to fit in. He reached inside for the rat, who squirmed furiously to get out of his grip until Harry Wished him still. He held the animal up by his tail, noticing the missing toe that Black said he would have.

"Put him on the floor," Dumbledore said. "If he's an Animagus, there's a spell that will force him to return to his human form."

Harry set the rat down. With a flash of blue-white light from Dumbledore's wand, and then another blinding flash, a man sprouted up from where the rat had been. He was short, pointy-nosed, balding, and still motionless.

Harry hated him on sight.

He took the ball from his pocket and tossed it down. It turned into Black before even hitting the floor and he grunted, jerked his head up to look around, inhaled sharply at the sight of Dumbledore then growled almost dog-like when he saw Pettigrew. He lunged, bony hands wrapping around Pettigrew's neck. Harry un-froze Pettigrew, who gagged and squirmed under the weight of Black's body.

"Sirius!" Dumbledore yelled, but Black was completely focused on Pettigrew. Dumbledore pointed his wand, there was a bang, and Black was thrown backwards.

Pettigrew continued to choke, squirming on the floor, hands scrabbling at his neck. Harry never took his gaze off him, Wishing for him to have the slightest bit of air so as to drag out the torment. Dumbledore threw a Stunning Spell at Harry, but it bounced harmlessly off a shield he conjured without even glancing up. The door crashed open and Lupin and Snape charged in. Lupin went straight to Black's side. Snape stalked past Pettigrew's choking form and grabbed Harry's shoulders.

"Stop it."

"He deserves this!" Harry yelled and Snape was thrown back, crashing into Hagrid's table and knocking tea cups to the floor.

Then a blond man appeared behind Harry. He pulled off a cloak embroidered with runes, swung it around, and let it settle on Harry's shoulder's inside out. Instantly, Pettigrew stopped choking. Lupin Stunned him, and then he, Dumbledore, and Snape turned their wands on the stranger—the Assistant.

Harry reached up to remove the cloak, feeling panic building in his chest as he realised he couldn't do magic, but the Assistant stepped behind him, planting both hands on his shoulders, and the cloak remained firmly in place.

"Get it off me! I can't do magic, let me go!"

"Calm down first," the Assistant ordered, twisting them both to keep Harry between himself and the three wands pointing their way. Harry couldn't care about being used as a shield—all he worried about was getting that cloak off him.

"Let him go," Dumbledore ordered.

"I'm not going to hurt him. Will you stop struggling?"

"Let me go, let me go, _let me go!_ "

Harry managed to knock an elbow into the man's gut, but it didn't make him let go, then the Assistant shifted one hand to press briefly against Harry's face and abruptly his panic faded. He stopped struggling.

"That's better," the Assistant said.

Black scrambled to his feet. "What did you just do to my godson?"

"Calmed him down. Look, I'm not your enemy," the Assistant said to them all. "Really, you can all stop looking at me like that. I'm not going to hurt him. I'm just trying to keep him from becoming a murderer before he's even fourteen."

"He deserves it," Harry said, but he couldn't infuse the words with his earlier anger. He just felt very calm.

"Oh, I'm not arguing with you, but that doesn't mean you should become a murderer, not to mention if you kill him now, there's no one to verify his story and clear your godfather's name."

That made sense, Harry thought.

None of the teachers lowered their wands. Dumbledore was looking the Assistant over thoughtfully.

"You're the Assistant? The one who told Harry that Professor Quirrell was going after the Philosopher's Stone?"

"That's me. Did you save it?" the Assistant asked Harry. "I mean, I assume you did because Voldemort hasn't resurrected. Which is a good thing, obviously."

"You might say that like you believe it," Snape said.

"Absolutely. I do believe it. Very bad thing for Voldemort to become immortal. Anyway, I would have found out what went down that summer, but there was this girl, y'know, and I'm assuming you dealt with the whole Chamber of Secrets business, too? Anyone die? Oh," he said, seeing their expressions. "Who?"

"Penelope Clearwater," Harry said quietly.

"Pity," the Assistant said with genuine emotion this time. He tapped his fingers to Harry's cheek again. "Anyway, you stay calm. Don't kill anyone. I'll be around. Love of my life went back to her husband so I've got no more distractions now. Be seeing you all."

He took his cloak from Harry, twirled it around to sit on his own shoulders, right way in this time, and vanished. Dumbledore swiftly cast several spells, and then frowned deeply. Harry assumed they didn't do what he wanted.

"Who on earth was that?" Lupin asked, looking utterly baffled. "That wasn't an invisibility cloak. Where's he gone? He can't have Apparated."

"I don't know," Dumbledore said quietly. He looked unsettled, but he shook it off. "I will deal with him later. We should all move to my office. I would like to know the details of what happened the night Voldemort attacked Godric's Hollow and what really happened with you and Peter, Sirius."

Black went pale. He swallowed thickly. "Are you… the Dementors…?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "I will not call the Dementors," he said, and Black sagged with relief. "I want to hear the truth, and then I will decide what happens next."

* * *

By the time Harry's enforced calm faded, his anger had eased enough for him to not kill Pettigrew immediately. He was in Dumbledore's office with Black, Lupin, and Pettigrew, and they had just finished telling the story of how Black and Pettigrew had switched Secret Keepers without telling anyone. Pettigrew tried to protest his innocence, claiming he'd been forced or tricked or tortured into giving up the Secret of the Potters location, but no one believed him.

"I think it's time I called the Aurors and Cornelius Fudge," Dumbledore said. Pettigrew went white.

"Do I have to be here for that?" Harry asked. He didn't really want to stick around when the Minister of Magic arrived. It would generate too many questions.

"No, you may leave, Mr Evans," Dumbledore told him.

"Evans?" Black said, confused. "Don't you mean Potter?"

Harry shook his head. "I told you before. It's Harry Evans."

"You can explain it to him later," Dumbledore added when Black opened his mouth to ask more. "I'm sure you'll both have much to talk about once Sirius is free."

Harry nodded, but just as he was about to leave, Pettigrew cried out, "I'll tell!"

Harry stopped and turned. Pettigrew sat in a chair with his wrists bound in front of him. He looked between them all, trying to look commanding and failing utterly.

"Let me go or I'll tell everyone who you really are. And what you can do! You tried to kill me! You can do wandless magic!"

"You won't tell anyone," Harry Wished, feeling some of that earlier rage seeping into him. "You won't tell anyone my true identity. You won't tell anyone the extent of my powers."

Dumbledore looked grave, gaze on Harry. Black leant over to mutter to Lupin, "Did James ever manage to look that scary?"

Lupin said nothing.

"How are we going to stop him letting this out?" Black asked Dumbledore.

"I'll tell everyone!" Pettigrew said again.

"No," Dumbledore said softly, firmly, but his eyes never left Harry. "You will not, Mr Pettigrew. You can go now, Mr Evans."

Harry left. He met McGonagall and Snape just beyond the gargoyle that guarded the entrance. Snape had left them earlier to let the staff know what was going on.

"Dumbledore's calling the Minster for Magic," he told them. "He said I didn't need to be there for it."

"Very well," McGonagall said. "Please go straight to the Great Hall, Mr Evans. Everyone is to stay there until Pettigrew is under arrest."

"Do they know that Sirius is innocent?"

"Not yet. For now they only now that he is in the castle and under the headmaster's command."

Harry nodded and set off. When he reached the Great Hall, everyone inside fell momentarily silent, turning to look at him, peering over the heads and shoulders of their neighbours. Harry realised he should have asked what they all knew about him.

Talk broke out again as he quickly moved down the Slytherin table to join Cid and Tyler, and he was immediately accosted by them and everyone sitting nearby.

"What happened?"

"They said you were kidnapped by Black."

"Did he torture you?"

"Why didn't he kill you?"

"Are you under the Imperius Curse?"

"Did he molest you?"

Harry gaped at Toni Kaidkin. "No! Eugh, why would even _say_ that?"

"Orion said the teachers wouldn't let you leave the boys' dorm and were acting like Sirius Black might be in there and that's why we all had to leave. Black's been in prison for years, and guys in prison turn into total perverts because they can't get any, and Vicky said you were under the Imperius Curse—"

"I _asked_ ," Victoria Vaisey objected.

"—so I just figured Black was forcing you to, y'know…"

"That's completely gross," Tyler said. "Is it true?"

"No!" Harry cried. "I have not been molested! I'm not under the Imperius Curse and I never was! There was no kidnapping or torture or anything nasty, okay?"

"So what did happen?"

Harry hesitated, wondering what to say, and Toni gasped.

"You totally were Sirius Black's bitch!"

Harry groaned and buried his head in his hands. "You don't believe I was molested by Sirius Black," he muttered, unheard over the uproar Toni's words caused. It didn't matter. They didn't need to hear his words for it to work. "You all heard a perfectly reasonable explanation for what happened this afternoon. You can't remember what it was, but you know it was reasonable and you're no longer interested in asking me about it."

As the chatter of students turned to other topics, Harry sighed gratefully. He folded his arms on the table, rested his head on them, and shut his eyes.

* * *

In Albus' office, things were tense. Cornelius Fudge had arrived with two Aurors, made a loud fuss about Sirius not being under command of a Dementors or even in chains, and listened sceptically to the story they had to tell. When Pettigrew protested his innocence, he looked as if he'd believe it.

"Well, we'll take them both back to the Ministry," he said, gesturing to Shacklebolt and Dawlish, the two Aurors he brought with him, "and do a proper interrogation to get behind all this mess."

"You mean you'll hand me to the Dementors and let that rat go free," Sirius croaked. "You haven't believed a word we've said."

Cornelius puffed himself up imperiously. "Why should I believe the words of a convicted criminal?"

Sirius gave a bark of laughter. "Convicted? Don't you need a trial for that? I was just thrown in a cell and left to rot."

"Surely my word is good enough, Cornelius?" Albus said quietly.

Cornelius spluttered for a moment before eventually saying, "All due respect, Dumbledore, but you're believing the words of a known criminal. Now you can believe what you will, but the fact of the matter is there's no proof Black's story is true and this poor man deserves a chance to prove his innocence."

"And I don't?" Sirius snarled while Pettigrew nodded enthusiastically.

"Minister, if I may," Severus said silkily, "I am more than willing to brew Veritaserum to give to both men so that we might uncover the truth of this matter."

"Severus Snape, isn't it? Well, thank you for the offer, but I can hardly trust a Hogwarts staff member to be unbiased in this issue and Veritaserum cannot be use without the accused's consent."

"I consent," Sirius said.

"And you can rest assured, Minister, I would like nothing more than to see Sirius Black given the Dementor's Kiss, but I would never tarnish my professional pride by brewing a doctored potion so that I might achieve my own ends."

Cornelius and his Aurors were the only ones in the room who believed that.

"I still cannot allow non-Ministry personnel to provide—"

"Actually," Albus interrupted, "you can if the accused party or parties request a Potions Master unaffiliated with the Ministry."

"Which I do," Sirius said. Cornelius looked furious.

"We will still need to take them back to the Ministry for the interrogation."

"Why?" Albus asked lightly. "We have the Minster of Magic, two Aurors in an official capacity, the Chief Wizard of the Wizengamot, the accused, our Potions Master, and two witnesses," he said, gesturing to Minerva and Remus.

"One witness," Cornelius sneered. "A werewolf has no standing as a witness."

"Then I will gladly call another of my staff members," Albus replied with a warning glance at Sirius, who bristled at Cornelius' words, offended on Remus' behalf. "Or you may find a second witness of your own. Severus, how long will it take you to brew the Veritaserum?"

"I have some already brewed."

"There you have it, Cornelius. So if you'd like to find a second witness…"

Realising he was cornered, Cornelius nodded stiffly.

"NO!"

Pettigrew's cry was followed by the pop of an Animagus transformation and a light thud as the ropes around his wrists dropped to the floor. He started to scurry away—and then flew off the floor, squealing in protest as he hovered in mid-air, legs still moving in a useless attempt to escape.

Cornelius didn't notice that Remus and Severus pointed their wands at the rat only after it was already airborne. Albus did, but he didn't comment on it. He looked calmly at Cornelius.

"Will you still require an interrogation or is Pettigrew's attempt to flee enough for a conviction?"

Cornelius' face was furious.

Remus cast the spell forcing Pettigrew to return to human form, and Shacklebolt and Dawlish immediately hauled him to his feet and cuffed his wrists behind his back. He wouldn't be able to transform again—all Auror handcuffs acted as magic restraints.

"An official interrogation will have to be done," Cornelius said tersely, clearly not happy at being shown a fool. "But I suppose it's safe enough to say that you're innocent, Mr Black."

"Is that an official pardon?"

Cornelius grit his teeth, but everyone was looking at him expectantly, so he forced a politician's smile on his face and nodded. "By the power invested in me by the office of the Minister of Magic, I herby proclaim you, Sirius Black, in-"

"He's an Animagus too!" Pettigrew shrieked suddenly. "He's an illegal Animagus as well!"

"You piece of—"

"Sirius!" Albus cut him off sharply.

"Is this true?" Cornelius demanded.

Albus looked at him solemnly. "It is, Cornelius, however it has no bearing on his innocence."

"He's breaking the law! Dawlish, arrest him!"

"Do you really want to do that, Cornelius?" Albus asked. "You're right that Sirius has broken this law, however he has just been proven innocent of a crime for which he spent twelve years in Azkaban prison. Do you really intend to send him back for another six months?"

Cornelius opened his mouth.

"I can only imagine what the voters would think," Remus muttered in a tone carefully calculated to carry.

Cornelius snapped his mouth shut, went a bit pale, and cleared his throat. "No, I wasn't thinking." He forced that politician's smile back on. "Forgive me, Mr Black, I get very caught up in the need for justice."

Sirius snorted. "Yeah, I noticed that when you threw me in prison without a trial."

"That was Barty Crouch," Cornelius said stiffly. "But as _I_ was saying, I hereby pardon you of all crimes for which you have been imprisoned."

"You're free," Remus said, smiling, and laughed when Sirius' expression turned to one of shock as the words actually processed. Albus smiled, as did Minerva. Severus scowled.

"You should probably lie low for a few more days," Albus suggested, "at least until the news gets out. Cornelius, I assume you'll be taking the Dementors with you when you leave?"

"What? Oh, yes, I suppose."

Albus beamed. "Glad to hear it. I'm afraid I have urgent business to attend to here, but Minerva will see you out. If you wouldn't mind, Minerva?"

She and Cornelius both looked surprised, and in Cornelius' case a little offended, that he didn't show the Minister out himself, but she nodded and the two of them left. Dawlish and Shacklebolt followed, pulling Pettigrew along between them.

None of them noticed Albus watching the door closely.

"Severus, would you deal with informing the school that everything is settled and the students may resume their activities? Please also inform the house elves that Remus will need an extra room in his quarters, and arrange a particularly extravagant feast tonight."

Severus nodded and left without a word. Once again, Albus watched the door closely as he left, then looked to the remaining two men. Sirius was trembling slightly, overwhelmed by his sudden freedom.

"Congratulations, Sirius. You're welcome to spend the last weeks of term at the school."

Sirius didn't look up. "I'm _free_."

"I'll take him back to my rooms," Remus said.

"Of course. Feel free to use my floo. I'd rather not scare the students."

Remus nodded and hauled Sirius out of the chair. "C'mon."

"I'm free, Moony."

"That you are."

"I'm _free_."

Remus just laughed, threw some powder into the fire, and pushed Sirius into it. "Remus Lupin's quarters," he called, and Sirius vanished in a flash of green fire. Remus gave Albus one last thanks and followed his friend through the fireplace.

Albus sat behind his desk and looked around the seemingly empty office. "Are you going to show yourself?"

A voice came from off to the left. "Perceptive sod, aren't you?"

"I like to think so. It's very rude to have a conversation with someone when you're invisible."

With a slight shimmer, the Assistant became visible. "I told Harry that once. You know I don't intend to tell you anything you want to know, Albus."

"You're quite the mystery, Mr Assistant."

The Assistant grimaced. "That's awful, don't call me that. It's just 'the Assistant', not mister."

"If you told me your real name—"

"Nope."

Albus frowned. "I don't trust you."

"Of course you don't. No one trusts me. Ever. It's a thing. I am untrustworthy."

"You like to talk a lot, don't you?"

The Assistant grinned then. "You've no idea how much it pisses some people off."

"I can imagine." He rested his elbows on the desk and propped his chin on his joined fingers. "Are you going to make an enemy of me, Assistant?"

The Assistant shrugged. He wandered over to a window and looked out, freely putting his back to Albus. It was either a gesture of absolute trust or supreme confidence. Albus was willing to bet the latter.

"Who knows? At the moment, I'm just going with the flow. A little push here or there…"

"What do you mean by that?"

The Assistant waved a hand. "Come see."

Albus stood and went to stand by him. Across the grounds, he could just make out the figures of Cornelius, Dawlish, Shacklebolt, Pettigrew, and Minerva. Shacklebolt conjured a Patronus as they approached the Dementors surrounding the school, and the group paused briefly. Minerva turned away to leave, and then all of them except Pettigrew suddenly collapsed. The Dementors turned to them and Albus sucked in a sharp breath and snatched up his wand, but the Assistant grabbed his wrist and slammed it down on the windowsill, holding it firmly in place.

"Just watch."

"They—!"

"The Dementors won't touch them."

Albus could hardly believe that, but he couldn't free his hand from the Assistant's grip. And yet, remarkably and inexplicably, the Dementors remained at their posts despite the close proximity of such easy prey. Pettigrew was looking around in terror, then his handcuffs must have released because he jerked his hands around. He didn't wait to see if it was a trap. In an instant he was gone from Albus' sight, transformed and scurrying away.

It wasn't often that Albus let anger infuse his voice, but he did now. "You did that?"

"I did," the Assistant said calmly. "Take heed from it, Albus. I'm not someone to be messed with."

He let go of Albus' wrist and stepped back. Albus didn't attack him.

"You stopped Pettigrew from escaping earlier when he transformed. Why let him escape now?"

"Because now Sirius has his pardon."

"Why let him escape at all?"

The Assistant shrugged. "Peter's going to do something for me."

"He will run straight to Lord Voldemort," Albus said, quiet, angry. "Peter Pettigrew is a man who seeks the protection of those stronger than him. Wanted by the Ministry, he will go back to the most powerful man he knows will take him."

The Assistant said nothing.

"But that's what you wanted, is it not? You want Voldemort to rise again."

"Now if I wanted that, why would I have given Harry information to stop Voldemort getting the Philosopher's Stone?"

"You didn't. You provided him information that almost led to his death."

The Assistant laughed then. "Oh, Albus, you suspicious bastard. Don't you realise that I knew of Harry's power long before you did? I knew he'd defeat that shade of Voldemort then. I don't want Harry dead."

"You don't seem to want Voldemort dead, either."

Still grinning, the Assistant shrugged. "Maybe, maybe not. Half the time, I don't even know what I want, but I know letting Peter go free suits my purposes and it won't hurt you much. Or Harry. So relax, Albus. I'll see you around."

He turned to go.

"Do you think I'll let you walk out of here?"

The Assistant stopped, looked back. "Do you think you can stop me?"

Albus said nothing. In truth, he didn't. The Assistant had just shown a degree of power that he'd only before seen from Harry.

The Assistant smiled. "I didn't think so. Goodbye, Albus."

He tapped his head in a salute, walked out the door, and vanished from view before the door shut behind him.

* * *

A few days later Harry sat in an armchair in the sitting room of Lupin's quarters after classes. He felt a little awkward being in Lupin's private rooms, something he'd never felt in Snape's, and wasn't sure if it was because he now knew Lupin was a werewolf or because Sirius was his godfather and he just didn't know how to deal with that.

He couldn't tell anyone, either. The whole story of what happened the night his parents were killed was out now, and it was public knowledge that Sirius was Harry Potter's godfather. The _Daily Prophet_ spent three entire paragraphs wondering if Sirius would claim him and whether the Boy Who Lived would finally come back to the public image.

"So. You're my godson. I thought you'd look more like James."

Lupin stared intently at his tea as he stirred it. Harry squirmed uncomfortably in his armchair, sitting opposite them.

"But anyway. I wanted to invite you to come and live with us in the summer—"

"Sirius!"

"—but Remus said we ought to get to know each other first."

"Yes, you should," Lupin said, looking at Harry. "Please don't feel pressured into answering right away. We've still got seven weeks of term left and Sirius is staying with me in that time. You can get to know him before you decide whether to spend the holiday with us or in the castle."

"The castle?"

"Professor Dumbledore said you were living here now since your family refused to care for you," Lupin said.

'Refused to care for him'… that was a politic way of putting it, but Harry wasn't about to fill them in on the details. He'd told Hermione because she was a friend; he'd told Dumbledore because he'd been naïve enough to trust Dumbledore would be decent about it; and McGonagall hadn't given him much choice last summer. But Sirius was a stranger and Lupin was just a teacher; Harry had no inclination to tell them about the abuse his suffered. Besides, it didn't matter anymore. No one could change the past and he was never going back to the Dursleys again.

"I will think about it, but I think I probably would like to live with you."

"You would?" Sirius said, surprised.

Harry nodded. "My mum and dad chose you for my godfather, which means they wanted you to look after me if anything happened, right?"

Besides, it wasn't like he'd be stuck there if Sirius turned out to be an unpleasant guardian. And if Harry half expected Sirius _would_ turn out bad, well… he couldn't be blamed for that, really. His family and Snape had both been disappointments, in their own way. It would be true to pattern if Sirius was too.

But he did want a permanent home and Sirius, as his godfather, seemed like a good candidate to provide that. It just didn't mean Harry was about to instantly start trusting him. He was still a stranger to Harry, someone Harry was almost willing to kill only a week ago.

Almost, because he wasn't sure he'd really have done it. His attack on Pettigrew was one thing, done in anger and fury, and afterwards when the adrenaline and shock faded he found himself shaking and stunned at what he nearly did. He could have killed Sirius plenty of times between when he caught him and when he got to Slytherin house, but he hadn't and when he thought about it, he didn't think he really could have either. He felt awful over killing Penelope Clearwater; he couldn't imagine how bad he'd feel for actively murdering someone of his own free will.

"They did," Sirius said, "and I'll be happy to. I promise you I won't kick you out like that rotten sister of Lily's."

Not wanting to linger on the Dursleys in case Sirius started asking questions, Harry changed the subject. "If I live with you, will you teach me how to become an Animagus?"

Sirius grinned. "Absolutely! You should find it easy enough, given your power. Which—how?"

"How what?"

"How are you— _you?_ I mean, you can do silent wandless magic, can't you? Way beyond what someone your age should, even though you're a year below what you should be? What's that all about?"

"Um, it's sort of a long story."

"I've got time."

"I'm supposed to be meeting my friends soon," Harry told him. "I'll tell you about it another time, though."

Not the demon deal, but the nature of his magic, maybe. He wasn't sure he could go a whole summer without using it, so he'd either have to be sneaky or tell them how he could do magic without getting in trouble from the Ministry.

Sirius nodded reluctantly. "Alright. We can start on the animagus transformation as soon as you want."

"No," Lupin countered. "Wait until the holiday, at least."

"What for?"

Lupin gave Sirius a dry look. "Because he needs to spend a month with a mandrake leaf in his mouth, remember? That's best done over the holiday."

"Oh yeah. Needs to be at the full moon, too, doesn't it? Seem to remember that."

"Uh," Harry said, "I need to keep a mandrake leaf in my mouth for a _month_?"

Sirius nodded. "It's bloody awkward, I can tell you that."

"Are you sure you want to become an Animagus?" Lupin asked.

"Actually, I'm not so sure," Harry said, and Lupin laughed. "I think I'll read up on it first."

"Good idea."

"You're _trying_ to put him off," Sirius grumbled. "Don't try to put him off, Remus."

"I'm advising him to do research first, Sirius. I am still his teacher so I cannot encourage him to be rash about his decisions. Even if I weren't his teacher, someone has to be sensible around here."

Sirius stuck his tongue out at him.

* * *

That weekend, Harry went to the library to look up the method for becoming an Animagus. It was a long and complicated process that he wasn't sure he really wanted to go through. Being an Animagus would be cool, but he wasn't sure it was really necessary. Besides, he could always just Wish himself into an animal, although that wasn't the same as being an Animagus and he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to try it. He was pretty sure it would come under the heading of human transfiguration, which was advanced magic that he hadn't read about. He did know that it wasn't something to be taken lightly; McGonagall had a never-ending list of horror stories about human transfiguration gone wrong. The last thing he wanted to do was Wish himself into a cat or something and then get stuck forever.

As it was the weekend and the weather was nice, the library was fairly quiet that day so Harry couldn't miss when someone approached his table. He was seated by the transfiguration section and it wasn't like he was doing anything he shouldn't, so he didn't worry about it, but he did scowl when Draco Malfoy came into view.

Malfoy saw him too and his lip curled into a sneer. "Evans."

"Malfoy," Harry returned in the same tone. "Hey!"

Malfoy snatched up one of his books, flicking through it. "Animagus? This is third year work. What are _you_ doing reading about them?"

"None of your business. Give me that back."

Malfoy didn't. "You're not thinking of trying it, are you?" he asked, laughing. "As if you could."

"I could."

"Yeah, right." He tossed the book down. "What are you hoping to be? I bet you're something pathetic, like a slug."

Harry wasn't sure what he'd like to be if he was an Animagus, but he was pretty sure he wouldn't be a slug. He had a sneaking suspicion he might end up a snake, given that he was Parselmouth, and he wasn't sure what he thought of that. Snakes were alright, he supposed, but he wasn't sure it was what he wanted to be.

Still, just to annoy Malfoy, he thought of snakes and then hissed, " _I'm not a slug._ "

Malfoy had no idea what he said, of course, but his eyes went wide and then narrowed angrily. "That doesn't mean you'll be a snake."

"More likely than being a slug," Harry said, and then felt distinctly unwelcome tingling in his right arm. "Oh crap."

"What?"

Harry pushed his chair back so fast it screeched against the stone floor, conjured a pillow without caring that Malfoy would see his wandless magic, and—

—he blinked his eyes open. He was on the floor of the library, Malfoy crouched by him. He had a pillow under his face and a weakness down his right side, but no vomit in his mouth for once. In fact, there was a distinctly minty taste.

"Alright there, Evans?"

"Fine," he muttered, sitting up. He didn't really want to, feeling tired and dizzy, but he didn't want to just lie there in front of Malfoy so he forced himself up and leant against the nearest bookcase. "What are you doing here?"

Malfoy looked offended. "I heard you weren't meant to be left alone when you had a seizure. You think I'd just leave you twitching about like that?"

"Yes," Harry said bluntly.

"Well, I wouldn't," Malfoy said curtly. "Besides, I can't say I won the argument when it ends with you having a seizure."

"We were arguing?"

"You don't remember?"

Harry shook his head. "I forget what happens right before it happens. What was the argument about?"

"How you'd definitely be a slug if you became an Animagus."

"Then you were losing it. I wouldn't be a slug."

"I'm thinking a fish, now. The way you were flopping about just now reminded me of a fish on dry land."

"Shut up, Malfoy," he said, but didn't have the energy to put any real hate in it. He shut his eyes and leant his head against the books. "I'd probably be a snake. Parselmouth and all."

"That's what you said before. Do you need to go to the Hospital Wing?"

Harry thought about it, but shook his head. He was tired, but he didn't seem to have smacked his head on anything or otherwise hurt himself. He just wanted to lie down and rest.

"You look like you're about to fall asleep, Evans. Get up, I'll walk you back to Slytherin."

Harry opened one eye—not that it made a difference to opening two eyes, of course—and saw Malfoy getting to his feet and holding out a hand.

"Why are you being nice to me?"

"I'm always nice."

"No, you're not. You're an arsehole."

"Just because we have some differences of opinion doesn't—"

"Differences of opinion? That's how you describe being a racist prick?"

"I could have just left you here to choke on your own puke, you know. I didn't have to stick around and clean up your mess."

"Being a decent person isn't the same as being nice," Harry told him, then grudgingly added, "But thanks for the pillow and the mouth rinse."

"You're most graciously welcome. Are you getting up or not?"

He was tempted to just take a nap right there, but Madam Pince probably wouldn't approve so he took Malfoy's proffered hand and got up. He had to let a brief wave of dizziness pass once he was up, but then he started collecting up his things and putting away the books he'd got out. Malfoy helped and Harry eyed him but didn't mention it, and they headed out the library together, stopping only so Malfoy could collect his own belongings from another table near the Charms section.

They didn't talk for the walk down to Slytherin. They didn't pass many people and the only person of note was McGonagall, who looked surprised to see them together but didn't say anything. When they reached the common room, Harry muttered one last thanks to Malfoy, who just nodded curtly, and headed to his dorm to collapse into bed.

* * *

Lucius Malfoy was a petty man.

He'd never admit it, but he was. Not always, because that was no way to live life, but occasionally. Sometimes he'd just get that overwhelming urge to make life difficult for someone. Not for personal gain, or out of genuine hatred, but just because an opportunity presented itself and he wanted to take it.

He could have got Remus Lupin fired before the end of his first week teaching. He knew the man was a werewolf and when he got a letter from Draco talking about the newest Defence teacher, Lucius very nearly stormed the castle that very day, taking with him every pureblood parent with a child at Hogwarts and getting Lupin arrested on the spot.

But he refrained. He wasn't a governor anymore and his influence over the teaching staff, what little he'd ever had, was completely gone now. Lucius might not like Dumbledore, but he had to assume that even that old man wouldn't be so foolish as to hire a werewolf without taking _some_ precautions. If Lucius got Lupin fired, Merlin only knew who Dumbledore would pull out of a hat to fill the position at such short notice. Of course, with the right pressure, Cornelius Fudge might have been convinced to force a replacement of his own choosing on the school, but Lucius knew the types in the Ministry. Chances were the post would be filled by some incompetent buffoon, or a man like Preston Yaxley. Lucius didn't want that man anywhere near his son; at least Lupin was only dangerous once a month.

So, very unhappily, he'd not got Lupin fired. He'd ordered Draco to keep him updated with letters and was both relieved and irritated to hear that Lupin, while poor and shabby and totally inadequate in almost every way, was actually a competent teacher, especially compared to Draco's last two.

But now Sirius Black was revealed as innocent of the crimes for which he'd been in prison and Lucius was feeling petty. Some might say it had been petty not to reveal the fact that he always knew Sirius was innocent, but it wasn't. Sirius was a blood-traitor and letting him rot in prison under the accusations of _not_ being a blood-traitor was an ironic kind of justice, in Lucius' opinion.

No, petty was Lucius deciding that, now that Sirius had his freedom and could go crawling into the bed of that filthy animal teaching Defence, he would ruin their celebration by writing to all those pureblood parents and asking if they knew their children were being taught by a werewolf.

He looked forward to the fallout from that.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

"Morning, Evans."

Harry turned on the bench, looking at Malfoy, who'd paused on his way to where the other third years sat further down the table. It was breakfast ten days after the revelation of Sirius' innocence.

"Uh… morning."

"Sleep well?"

"Yeah, I guess. Why are you asking me that?"

"Merely being polite. Perhaps you should try it sometime. Enjoy your day."

Harry stared after him, thoroughly confused, then turned to Cid and Tyler.

"I think my hearing's going. Did he just tell me to enjoy my day?"

"Yes," Cid said, stabbing a hashbrown with his fork. "Maybe he wants to fuck you."

Harry gaped. Tyler frowned. "How did you get that from 'enjoy your day'?"

"Why else would he be nice to him?" Cid asked around a mouthful of food. "This is Malfoy we're talking about."

"What makes you think he's even into boys?"

Cid shrugged and swallowed. "Why shouldn't he be?"

"Well, no reason, I guess. But don't people normally have a reason for thinking someone's gay before saying things like that? It's not like he's camp or anything."

"So? Just as much chance of him being gay as there is of him being straight."

"Yeah, but…"

"Is this some Muggle hang-up? Straight until proven otherwise or something like that?"

"What do you mean a 'Muggle hang-up'? I was raised by a wizard."

"But in a Muggle neighbourhood. I'm right, aren't I?"

"Well… yeah, I guess."

Cid shook his head and took a slice of bread to mop up the left over baked beans sauce on his plate. "Fucking Muggles. Crash course, you pair of half-wits, assumptions like that will get you hexed in the wizarding world. No one cares about your sexuality here. Also, Harry, shut your mouth, you're catching flies."

Harry snapped his mouth shut. "He does not want to have sex with me. He doesn't even like me."

"Doesn't have to like you to want to fuck you."

"We're thirteen!"

"We are," Tyler said, pouring himself a gobletful of water. "You haven't had your birthday yet, remember?"

Harry looked at him, baffled. "I turned thirteen last July."

Cid paused in the middle of chewing. Tyler lowered his goblet. "You can't have. If you turned thirteen last summer, you'd be in the year above us."

"I am meant to be," Harry said, and then at their stunned looks he added, "Didn't I ever mention that?"

Cid swallowed. "No! How? Why are you in our year if you're in the third year's birth group?"

"Um," Harry said, thinking fast. "Medical reasons. The epilepsy and… stuff. I couldn't start when I was supposed to."

"So you're fourteen this July?" Tyler asked.

Harry nodded.

"Well there you are then," Cid said decidedly. "Malfoy's fourteen in June, you're both plenty old enough for sex."

Everyone in Slytherin knew when Malfoy's birthday was because he made a loud fuss about it every year.

"Law says seventeen," Harry pointed out.

"Are you saying you wouldn't have sex with someone right now if you had the chance just because the law says?"

"Yes."

"Bollocks. You would have sex if you had the chance because sex is awesome."

"You don't know that."

"Course I do. Everyone knows that."

"Everyone says that. You've never done it though. Have you?"

"He wishes," Tyler said, and Cid scowled. "And we all know who with."

"Shut up," Cid snapped, but he glanced down the table at where Tabitha sat with the other girls. "You haven't done it either."

Tyler shrugged. "At least I've snogged a girl."

"Oh yeah," Harry said, remembering something that'd slipped his mind since finding Sirius. "You didn't tell us you were going out with Isabelle Walker."

"What?" Cid cried. "Since when?"

"Since never," Tyler said. "I'm not going out with her."

"But I saw you kissing her," Harry said.

Tyler grinned. "Doesn't mean I'm going out with her."

Cid looked outraged. "Seriously? Toni _and_ Isabelle?"

Tyler coughed, rubbed his neck, then said, "Also Luna Lovegood and Sebastian Calais."

Cid burst into laughter. Harry wasn't sure what was so amusing, but while he did, Harry said, "Why are you kissing so many people? Last year you said love stuff is stupid."

Tyler shrugged. "All that crap Lockhart did was stupid, but… kissing is fun."

Cid managed to stop laughing long enough to say, "I can't believe you snogged Loony Lovegood."

Tyler's response to that was cut off by a stunned cry from the Ravenclaw table. Harry wasn't sure exactly who it came from, but their was a flurry of noise and some of the Slytherins were getting worked up as well. It didn't take long for word to spread through the whole hall.

Remus Lupin was a werewolf.

Harry knew already of course. It made him uneasy, but he'd kept it quiet because Lupin seemed nice enough and he'd been friends with Harry's father had been Lupin's friend, but it quickly became clear that some people felt considerably more than just uneasy about the news. They were downright horrified.

Harry glanced up at the staff table, but Lupin wasn't there that morning. Neither was Dumbledore.

It was Monday so they had Defence that morning. Or they were supposed to. Harry's housemates absolutely refused to go, stubbornly sitting at the Slytherin table and insisting they weren't going to class. Only Harry stood to leave.

"You're not going?" Jia asked incredulously when he picked up his bookbag. "He's a werewolf!"

"It's day," Harry pointed out. "Also the full moon was over a week ago so even if we were suddenly having nighttime classes it wouldn't matter."

"But you can't—he's a _werewolf_ ," she repeated, as if he didn't quite understand what that meant.

"So you said."

He walked out, but he wasn't overly surprised to reach the Defence class and find a message on the blackboard saying that classes were cancelled for the day. He wondered if they would be cancelled for the entire rest of the term, or if they'd get substituted by the other teachers. Throughout the year, occasional lessons had been covered by other teachers—Harry remembered Hermione and Neville's class complaining about having Snape one time in the first term—but presumably no one had been expected to handle any today so they got the day off.

He headed to the library instead, but his route took him past Lupin's office and he heard sounds from within, but not voices so he knocked.

"Come in," Lupin called. He sounded weary and when Harry pushed open the door he caught a glimpse of concern on Lupin's face before he smiled. "Harry. Sorry, I don't have a seat to offer you right now."

This was due to the fact that there were books piled on his chairs. He was in the middle of packing.

"You're leaving." It wasn't a question.

"Yes. I'm afraid something's come up and, well, I can't stay any longer."

"Because everyone knows about you."

Lupin looked momentarily surprised, then resigned. "So it's already out."

"I didn't tell them."

Lupin looked startled. "Of course you didn't."

"I just… I thought you might think that," Harry said with a shrug. "Seeing as I found out last week."

"You gave your word that you would keep it to yourself. I trusted that. It was bound to happen eventually, though."

Harry wasn't sure what to say to that. "I guess Sirius is going with you."

Lupin nodded, waving his wand at his desk. The drawers opened and quills, parchment, inkpots, and sundry other items soared out and flew into his battered suitcase. "We should have living arrangements sorted by the end of the term and we'll sort out getting you there. People might talk if Sirius or I pick you up from King's Cross, but we'll figure something out. Assuming you still want to live with us."

Harry nodded. He had reservations about living with a werewolf and a man he barely knew, godfather or not, but he had few other options. He wasn't staying at Hogwarts again, even if McGonagall offered rather than Snape, and it would be nice to have somewhere to call home.

* * *

For the next few weeks, just until their exams, Defence classes were taught by whichever member of staff was free at the time. Although it had seemed that the entire school objected to being taught by a werewolf when the news first got out, Harry did actually hear some people bemoaning Lupin's absence, saying he'd been one of the better teachers the school had in recent years. Harry didn't know what the teachers four years ago had been like, but Lupin was certainly the best of the three he'd experienced.

After exams, they got Defence periods free, and then term was over. For the journey down to London, Harry shared a train compartment with Hermione and Neville, who he'd hardly spent any time with that year, mostly because of Hermione.

"I won't be so busy next year," she mentioned when it came up. "I've dropped Muggle Studies, so I'm only taking three extra classes now."

"I still don't know how you managed to get to them all," Neville said with a shake of his head. "Half your classes were at the same time."

Hermione flushed. "I wasn't allowed to tell anyone," she said apologetically, "but I suppose now I don't have it anymore… I was using a Time Turner."

Harry and Neville gaped.

"A Time Turner?" Neville repeated, awed. "Really? They're meant to be restricted."

Hermione nodded. "Professor McGonagall wrote all sorts of letters to the Ministry of Magic so I could have one, saying I was a model student and would never use it for anything except my classes. But it was just so exhausting and without Muggle Studies or Divination I can have a normal schedule next year."

"Wow," Harry murmured. He'd read about Time Turners, but never tried to emulate their power. He knew they could only go back a maximum of five hours and if he was going to go back in time, he would go much further than that. But he also read that going back further risked damaging the very fabric of time and he didn't want to do that, nor discover that this was one of things where his powers were restricted. It would be upsetting to try and Wish himself back to 1981 only to find out he couldn't.

At King's Cross, Harry said his goodbyes and headed through the barrier to the Muggle part of the station. There, Sirius was waiting for him in disguise, playing the part of Harry's pretend Muggle foster family. In the letter he sent Harry a few days before, he said he'd be wearing a leather jacket and stylishly ripped jeans so Harry would know who to look out for. He hadn't mentioned that the jacket would be studded with bits of metal and badges, or that his hair, which had been cut from the waist-length mess of tangles it used to be, would be gelled up into spikes that probably classified as lethal weapons. Harry wasn't even sure it _was_ Sirius when he first saw him, but then he strolled up to Harry and greeted brightly, "Hey, kid."

Harry stared at him. Sirius' grin faltered.

"You don't like my look?"

"Uh…" Harry said, not wanting to insult him. He noticed a lot of people looking at them. The Weasleys hurried past them, Mrs Weasley shooting Sirius a look of near disgust. Fred and George looked like they thought it was cool. Ron gaped. Ginny caught Harry's gaze and raised her eyebrows questioningly. Harry just shrugged, and then they were gone.

Sirius' shoulders slumped. "I guess I'm a bit old to be sporting the punk rocker look now. It was all the rage back in the seventies… the girls loved me…"

Harry wondered what sort of girl loved a man who could kill someone just by bending over and charging at them like a rhinoceros.

"I think your normal look is better," Harry offered.

"The only look you've seen on me is prison starved," Sirius grumbled.

They left the station and Sirius led him to a parking space where there was—

"A motorbike?"

"A flying motorbike," Sirius corrected.

Harry looked from the bike to his trunk and back again. "Um, Sirius…"

"Yes?"

"Where are you going to put my trunk?"

"Just shrink it down."

"You're supposed to be a Muggle," Harry reminded him, "and I'm not supposed to do magic outside of school."

There was a pause.

"Bugger," Sirius said.

In the end, they walked the bike away from the station parking and onto a relatively empty side street to shrink his trunk down out of sight, then Harry climbed onto the bike behind Sirius, clutching tightly and not entirely sure about the whole thing. He loved flying, of course, but he did prefer to be in control of whatever it was he flew.

They rode through London, but once they left the city, Sirius pulled into an empty side road and took to the skies, and Harry's hesitations vanished. The broadness of the bike and Sirius' body in front of him made him feel more secure than he did on a broom, a little less worried about seizing and falling off. He still would have preferred to be in control, but it was definitely an exciting way to travel.

Black Stag House, Sirius and Remus' new home, was just outside of Coleford, Gloucestershire, right near the Forest of Dean. The only house for half a mile, it was a medium-sized three-bedroom two-bathroom with a sizable garden, and just a stone's throw from the forest itself. Harry was surprised to get the second largest room as his own. He expected to end up with the third bedroom, but when he looked in it on his way to the bathroom it was undecorated and currently full of boxes, apparently serving as temporary storage.

His own room had basic furniture but was equally undecorated, and he had permission to do what he liked with it. He wasn't sure what he'd like yet so he left it as it was and started unpacking. Remus was downstairs, preparing dinner, and Sirius was changing. When he came to Harry's room ten minutes later, his hair was gel-free and his punk clothes were replaced by regular robes. He looked a lot better.

"Where does Professor—I mean, where does Remus sleep?" Harry asked when Sirius dropped onto Harry's bed to watch him finish unpacking.

"What do you mean?"

Harry jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "I saw your bedroom, but the other one is full of boxes. I thought you were living together."

"We are. Remus and I share a room, obviously."

"Why obviously?"

Sirius looked at him. Harry looked back. It took a few seconds longer than it should have to click.

"Oh," he said. "You're… I didn't realise."

Sirius frowned. "Does it bother you?"

"No!" Harry said quickly, then realised that it sounded over-defensive. "No, really, I don't mind. I just didn't realise, that's all. I thought you were just friends."

Sirius nodded. His frown faded, but he still watched Harry closely as he put away his clothes.

"I know you grew up among Muggles. They've got some funny ideas about sexuality."

"I don't mind, honest," Harry insisted. "I don't care that you're gay, really."

"Alright. Good. Not that I am."

"Am what?"

"Gay."

Harry looked around, baffled. "But you just said—you and Remus—"

"Yeah, but I'm not gay. Remus is, but I'm just… I like women, and I like Remus, but I've never liked another man like that so I'm not gay."

"Oh, you're bisexual," Harry realised, and really wished the conversation was over because discussing his godfather's sexuality was just outright _weird_.

"I like to think of myself as Remus-sexual, but sure if that's how you want to put it."

"Right," Harry said, and changed the subject, "By the way I have a hospital appointment on the seventh."

Sirius had been peering over into Harry's trunk, but he snapped his head up at that. "What? Why? What's wrong with you?"

"The epilepsy, remember? I told you about it. I have to have regular check ups with my healer. If everything goes well at this one, then I only need them yearly after this."

"Oh, okay." Sirius scratched his chin. "How much does your healer know about you? They might find it strange for me to take you."

Harry shook his head. "It's okay, Kirith knows all about me. If she's seen the news she'll already know you're my godfather so it won't be weird."

"Cool. Who normally takes you, anyway?"

Harry hesitated, then said, "Snape."

Sirius' eyes bulged. " _What?_ "

Harry shrugged, aiming for nonchalance. "He was the first one to find out about my epilepsy so he arranged it the first time, and then he was my head of house so it made sense for him to take me."

Sirius' lip curled. "How did you end up in Slytherin anyway?"

"It's where the Sorting Hat put me," Harry said defensively, "and there's nothing wrong with it. I like being a Slytherin."

Sirius didn't look happy about that, but he didn't comment on it. He looked over as Harry went to close his now mostly empty trunk, and reached over to stop him. Harry's chest tightened when Sirius grabbed Kiwi and yanked her out and he had to stop himself from snatching her away from him.

"You still have this?" he said, incredulous but not mocking, a nostalgic smile creeping over his face. "You know Lily gave you this, your first Christmas. You were barely bigger than it, you were such a tiny little baby."

Harry's chest was suddenly tight for a completely different reason. Sirius glanced up, held the bear out. Harry took it.

"Dinner should be ready soon. See you down there?"

Harry nodded. Sirius left and Harry lifted Kiwi, clutching her tightly and closing his eyes, burying his face in her fur and whispering "I love you."

And that voice whispered back, "I love you, Harry," and his breath hitched. For a decade he'd pretended that voice was his mother's and now he knew it was. In that instant, any lingering connection the bear had to Snape vanished. Kiwi was all he had of his mother and she was the only person he wanted her connected to. He placed her carefully on his bed, not wanting to leave her in his trunk now, and then headed down to dinner.

Unlike meals at the Dursleys, where he'd always been ignored, or with Snape, who rarely spoke as he ate, dinner with Sirius and Remus was relaxed and filled with conversation. Remus asked how his exams went and the classes he was planning to take next year, and when they were nearly finished Sirius brought up the Animagus transformation.

"I don't think I want to do it," Harry told him, and Sirius' face fell.

"Why not? Being an Animagus is great."

"Yeah, but the process is so complicated. I don't want to hold a mandrake leaf in my mouth for a whole month."

"It's not so bad. Your dad and I managed it."

Harry shrugged.

"C'mon, kid, it'll be great."

"Sirius," Remus chided, collecting up their plates. "Don't push him. If he doesn't want to, he doesn't have to."

Sirius pouted. "I know. But you should really think about it. It'd be great if we could run about together."

"Assuming I was an animal that had legs," Harry mentioned.

Sirius laughed. "Of course you'd have legs. Oh, wait, unless you think you'll be a fish? Or are you hoping for a bird?"

"A bird would be cool," Harry said wistfully, and didn't say that he really doubted he'd be a fish. He couldn't even swim, but he wasn't about to admit that. "But I figured I might end up as a snake."

Sirius grimaced. "God, no. No godson of mine is a snake, Slytherin or no."

Harry felt his stomach sink a little. Remus came back through the archway from the kitchen and Harry caught his eye, knowing from his expression that he knew about the Parseltongue. He'd probably heard it from the other Hogwarts' teachers and knew all about the Chamber of Secrets business.

"Harry, will you please do the washing up?" Remus asked. Glad for any excuse to avoid an awkward conversation, Harry nodded.

"Whoa, hey, no," Sirius said. "We're wizards, Remus. No need to make the kid do it by hand."

"I don't mind," Harry said hurriedly.

"Chores are good for children," Remus added. "They teach life skills and responsibility."

"He just finished school, Moony. You can't make him do chores." Sirius went to draw his wand, but Remus caught his arm.

"Harry is going to do the washing up, and you and I are going to go upstairs and have a conversation."

Sirius frowned. "About what?"

"Some things that you need to know," Remus said quietly, taking his wrist and pulling him out of the chair. "We'll be down in a bit, Harry."

Harry nodded and watched them leave. He moved through to the kitchen and considered just Wishing clean the small pile of washing up, but decided to do it by hand. It would keep him busy for a bit.

He finished cleaning before they reappeared. There was nothing to do, but he didn't want to go upstairs just yet so he conjured himself a small bouncing ball and threw it against the living room wall for a while until he finally heard footsteps.

He vanished it and stood up from the sofa, turning to look as Sirius and Remus came through from the front hall. Harry wasn't sure what Sirius' attitude towards him was going to be now, and he stepped back when Sirius started towards him, already thinking of old parts of London where he'd flee to if Sirius tried anything.

Sirius stopped short at Harry's reaction. Remus stood a little behind him, watching. Harry kept an eye on their hands in case they went for their wands.

"Why'd you back away from me?" Sirius asked.

"Why'd you come towards me?"

"I was going to give you a hug."

Harry blinked; he hadn't expected that. "A hug?" Hermione was the only person who ever hugged him. He didn't mind it from her, but he wasn't sure if he wanted it from Sirius. "Why?"

"It's what godfathers do to comfort their godsons."

"I don't need comforting. What did Professor Lupin tell you?"

Giving him a shrewd look, Sirius answered, "He told me you got possessed by some diary of Voldemort's last year, and that you're a parselmouth."

There was a pause, then Harry said, "And?"

"And what?"

"Are you going to… throw me out?" He wanted to ask if Sirius would hit him—or hex him; wizards used magic to discipline their kids—but didn't want to give him ideas.

"I told you I wouldn't do that," Sirius said firmly.

"You also said no godson of yours is a snake. A parselmouth is as close to a snake as I can get without actually being one. If you don't want me anymore, you wouldn't care about breaking your word."

Sirius scowled and stalked forwards, this time ignoring when Harry stiffened and backed up another step. He stopped just out of reach, started to lift a hand, then dropped it again. He planted it on his hip instead and set his jaw.

"I don't break my word, ever. You're my godson and I'm not kicking you out just because you speak to snakes. I'm not kicking you out for _anything_. So can I give you a hug now?"

"I'd rather you didn't," Harry said warily, not about to take his words at face value and certainly not comfortable with being hugged.

Sirius looked disappointed, but nodded. "Alright, we'll work up to that. I'm sorry, by the way."

"For what?"

"For not being around. You've really had it rough and I'm sorry I wasn't there to help you. I never should have gone after Wormtail like I did all those years ago. I was so focused on revenge that I never thought about how much you'd need me."

"It's okay," Harry said, feeling tremendously awkward.

"No, it's not. But I'm here now and I promise I'm going to look after you. I'll be the best godfather anyone could possibly want."

"Um, thanks," Harry said, and smiled weakly, which seemed to be enough.

* * *

Harry gradually settled into his room, painting it in two simple shades of blue and then sticking up all his photos from the summer before, as well as a few of his friends. He got two large bookcases that he filled, emptying a surprising amount of books from his trunk. So many had been stuffed in his enlarged backpack and the sack he'd snatched up that time in the Room of Requirement that he hadn't realised just how many books he really owned. He was disappointed to realise that he'd read barely half of them and made it his focus for the holiday to get through a lot.

Living with Sirius and Remus was a lot different than the Dursleys or Snape. Remus made him do some chores—the washing up, a bit of cleaning; nothing like what the Dursleys had done—and attempted to enforce a bedtime, but Harry _and_ Sirius objected to that and Remus was forced to relent. Harry thought it might be weird living with a teacher semi-permanently, but Remus was so friendly and generally parental that it wasn't an issue.

Sirius, on the other hand, was far from parental. He acted like he wanted to be Harry's friend, instead, and seemed intent on making up for thirteen years lost time by taking Harry on days out or just spending as much time with him as possible. Harry had to actually tell him to back off eventually, unused to so much attention and craving some alone time.

The only time Sirius and Remus both got parental was the day Harry went to the Lake District without telling them. He was just wanting to get away from the house on his own for a bit, and the Lake District was his favourite place to go for that, and it didn't occur to him to let them know he was going. The Dursleys, during the summer two years ago, hadn't cared if or when Harry left the house, and at Hogwarts last summer he'd never had an inclination to leave, so Harry hadn't thought to mention that he was going out now.

He was relaxing on one of the small beaches beside Lake Windemere when Remus came rushing up to him, Sirius as Padfoot bounding along behind him. Padfoot leapt on Harry, licking his face, and Harry shoved him away, holding him back and looking up at Remus.

"What are you doing here?"

"I should be asking you that," Remus replied in a harsher tone than Harry ever heard from him. He had a familiar emerald pendant hanging against his chest, the same one McGonagall had used to find Harry a year ago. "What were you thinking, running off like that?"

"I didn't run off," Harry objected. "I just wanted to get out for a bit. I wanted some time alone. Did you call Snape?"

Remus sat down beside him. Padfoot settled himself across Harry's legs. "You vanished, Harry. We had no idea where you were, no way of tracking you. I contacted Hogwarts to see if you'd gone there and Albus said Severus had this pendant to track you. He reluctantly leant it to us."

"Reluctantly?"

Padfoot growled. Remus reached over to scratch between his ears.

"I think he wanted to come after you himself."

Harry snorted. Remus smiled. "I noticed during the school year that you didn't seem to like him much. Can I ask why?"

"He's a git," Harry said emphatically, wanting to use a much stronger word. Padfoot barked an agreement.

"I won't ask," Remus decided diplomatically, "but he did give us the means to find you. So would you like to tell us why you ran off?"

"I told you, I didn't. I just wanted a bit of time alone."

"You didn't think to mention it to us?" Remus asked, and Padfoot whined.

"Sorry. I'm not used to having to tell people where I'm going."

Padfoot whined and nuzzled insistently against Harry's stomach, nudging his cold nose between Harry's t-shirt and trousers to press unpleasantly against Harry's stomach.

"Stop that," Harry said, swatting him between the eyes. "I thought dogs weren't allowed on this beach anyway? No dogs, no smoking."

Sirius froze. Remus sat up. "Oh dear, we must have missed that. We should get along."

He got to his feet and Padfoot climbed off Harry's legs, but when Harry didn't move, they looked down at him.

"Harry?"

"I'll see you later."

Padfoot growled. Remus dropped a hand into the fur on his neck. "We need to leave."

"You do. I want to stay. I'll be back later."

"Harry, you can't stay here alone," Remus objected.

Harry laughed. "Sir, I grew up alone. I can be left on a beach for an afternoon, and remember I did come here to be alone?"

Remus frowned and opened his mouth to object, but Harry cut him off.

"Really, I'm fine, and I don't want to go back yet. If you try to force me, then next time I won't come back at all."

Remus spluttered. Padfoot growled and grabbed the sleeve of Harry's t-shirt.

"I mean it," Harry said firmly, trying to tug his sleeve free. "Look, I said I'd live—Sirius, get off!—I said I'd live with you, but if you try to say where I can and can't go, I'm leaving again. Just because you're my godfather doesn't mean I'm going to let you control me."

Sirius let go and whined, lowering his head and peering up at Harry woefully. Remus looked about for anyone that might report him for having a dog on the beach, then crouched down.

"Harry, we don't want to control you, we just want to look out for you."

"Thanks, but I can look out for myself, and I need some time alone. I'm not used to living with people."

"You've been a Hogwarts student for two years."

"Yeah, and I still take time away from them every few weeks. Look, I promise I'll be back home by dinner, alright?"

Padfoot whined again. Remus frowned, but after a moment he nodded. "Alright. We'll see you at dinner. C'mon, Padfoot."

Padfoot tried to stay put. Remus grabbed his scruff and tugged hard, but it was a very large woman with her chin out and an expression to frighten war criminals that made him move. She had the distinct look of someone who'd not only report illegal dogs, but chase them off the beach—if she hadn't been too fat to do it.

Remus and Padfoot beat a hasty retreat and the woman came to a stop beside Harry. "Is that your father?" she demanded.

"Never met him before," Harry lied, and Wished for her to go away and ignore him, leaving him to lay back in the sand and quietly sunbathe until he got burned.

* * *

To Harry's surprise, a week into the summer holiday he got a letter from Draco Malfoy. Harry opened it suspiciously, but it was the kind of average letter one would write to a friend—Malfoy talked about his holidays, complained about his summer homework, and asked how Harry was doing.

The only problem being that they _weren't_ friends. Harry would have thought it'd been sent to him accidentally, but it was his name on the envelope and at the top of the letter.

His responding letter was short and to the point: _We're not friends. Why are you writing to me?_

Malfoy's reply was just as short: _I'd like to be._

Harry's was even shorter: _Never._

The full moon was on 22nd July. A week beforehand, Harry nervously approached Remus as he did the laundry, glad that Sirius was out right then. He often went running into the Forest of Dean as Padfoot, revelling in his freedom. If he stayed inside for too long, he got easily wound up.

"Everything alright?" Remus asked lightly, folding socks onto the top of the pile.

"I, um… canIstayatafriend'shouseduringthefullmoon?" Harry said in a rush, staring at his feet. "It's not—I know you're taking the potion and you won't be dangerous and you're going to be locked in your room and Padfoot—"

"It's fine," Remus interrupted, giving a reassuring smile when Harry glanced up. "Of course you can stay at a friend's house."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. I understand, Harry; werewolves are scary. Trust me, I know," he said with a sardonic smile. "I'm not offended. I'd rather you be honest with me than sit in your room feeling scared. Who are you going to stay with?"

"I'll ask Tyler. He said I could come over at some point."

"Alright, let me know when you've made arrangements."

"Thanks," Harry said guiltily.

Tyler readily agreed to have Harry over for a few days. As he was supposed to be living with Muggles, he couldn't take the floo without question so would be going on the Knight Bus for the first time. Remus saw him off, but Sirius didn't. He was more offended than Remus that Harry didn't want to stay in the house over the full moon.

"If you'd done the Animagus transformation, you wouldn't have to worry about it."

"I'll talk to him," Remus promised Harry as they walked down the front path to the road. "Don't let him get to you. Have fun."

Harry nodded, more annoyed than guilty. Sirius acted as if Harry had somehow betrayed him by not becoming an Animagus and not staying in the house with a werewolf, and that pissed him off. Just because Sirius was one—just because Harry's father had been one—it didn't mean Harry had to follow in their footsteps and fill that space in their group left by James.

He put it out of his mind, an easy enough task once he was on the Knight Bus and focused on not getting thrown around by the sudden turns and jumps it took. He was extremely tempted to Wish all the chairs to stay in one place, but it would draw attention and he knew he shouldn't do things like that even if he could make people forget. He was very glad to finally reach Bath and disembark.

"Thanks for letting me stay," Harry said when he met Tyler outside his house. "Sorry it was such short notice."

Tyler waved his hand dismissively, leading him inside. "It's cool. Do you wanna dump your bag then we can go see if Alex wants to go down to the river?"

"Sure. Hey, did his mum have the baby yet?"

Tyler scowled. "Yeah. Little Jessica. You'll probably meet her when we go over. Alex thinks she's the greatest thing ever but I just find her boring and annoying. She screams a lot."

Jessica wasn't screaming when they got there. The minute they stepped through the door Mrs Stone warned them to keep quiet because she just put the baby to sleep.

"Oh good," Tyler said cheerfully as they headed up to Alex's room. "We might not get dragged to see her then."

He was overly hopeful. As soon as they'd exchanged greetings, Alex tugged Harry across the hall to his sister's room and they crept quietly over to the crib. She was sort of cute, Harry thought, this little pink bundle with fine blonde hair and her tiny fingers curled loosely against her palms. He couldn't see what Tyler had against her, but he figured he probably couldn't judge when he'd only seen her sleeping and not heard her crying and screaming.

They went to hang out by the river, relaxing on a patch of grass by the lazily swirling water and chatting about their summers so far. None had been particularly interesting, but Alex was looking forward to the Quidditch World Cup at the end of August.

"Are you going?" Alex asked Harry, who shook his head. He wasn't sure yet, truthfully; he didn't have tickets, but he was thinking of making some discreet Wishes when the time came. The Quidditch World cup wasn't something to miss. "You two are missing out."

"Just a bunch of blokes flying around," Tyler said, laying back and closing his eyes, arms folded behind his head. "Not worth spending money on. More interested in tomorrow. We need something to do. Alex, give us something to do tomorrow."

"Do what you want," Alex replied. "I won't be here."

Tyler cracked an eye open. "Why not?"

"We're going to my grandma's. She hasn't seen the baby yet."

Tyler closed his eye and blew a raspberry. "Boring."

"Why don't you take Harry to the cinema? You could go see the _Lion King_."

Tyler grunted. "S'pose. Might have to find something else as well. Gotta be out of the house for a while."

"How come?" Harry asked.

"Lucius Malfoy is coming over to see Marcus. He'll probably be there a while."

"Are they friends?"

"They're not friends-friends, just political friends. Lucius Malfoy donates a lot of money to the Ministry so Marcus kind of has to pretend to like him. We probably wouldn't see him anyway, 'cause they'll stay in Marcus' study, but I'd rather not be here when he is, not if he's anything like Draco."

"He's been writing to me this summer," Harry said.

"Draco Malfoy?"

Harry nodded. "He says he wants to be friends."

" _Why?_ "

"Dunno."

"Maybe Cid's right. Maybe he does want to fuck you."

"Tyler!" Alex cried, poking his friend in the ribs. "Don't say things like that."

"Sorry," Tyler said insincerely, "but it's possible. Maybe Malfoy fancies him."

"Whatever, just don't be so vulgar about it."

Under his eyelids, Harry suspected Tyler was rolling his eyes. When you hung about Cid Villiers for as long as they had, it tended to rub off.

"Are you even interested in boys?" Tyler asked Harry. "You've never said anything about it."

Harry shrugged. "I dunno. I've never really had a crush on anyone."

"At all?"

"No. Is that weird?"

"It's a bit weird," Alex said.

"You've never wanted to kiss anyone?" Tyler asked. "What about Jia? You hung out with her during first year."

"No. She's nice, but…"

"Tabitha? She's pretty, although Cid would probably curse you if you did."

"Not really."

"What about Malfoy? I know he's a prick but you've got to admit he's kind of good looking."

"Outside beauty is no replacement for a beautiful soul," Alex said, then told Harry, "My mum says that."

"What he means is he thinks Malfoy's fit, too, but he won't admit it."

"I don't think he's fit," Alex argued. "He's a mean, horrible… person. If you want someone to fancy, then pick Cedric Diggory. He's handsome _and_ nice. He's a prefect and everyone thinks he'll be headboy the year after next."

"He is pretty hot," Tyler agreed. "Not sure you can 'decide' to fancy someone though. You fancy him, Harry?"

"I… don't know," Harry said awkwardly, and Tyler opened his eyes to look at him. "He's good looking I guess, but… I don't really _fancy_ him."

"Do you only like girls?" Alex asked. "There are plenty of really pretty girls in our year. What about—"

Tyler waved a hand. "Stop, Alex. He doesn't fancy anyone. It's no big deal. You're probably one of those people that just finds the right person and then that's it, that's the only person you ever fancy and you'll get married and live happily ever after in sickening domesticity."

"Right," Harry said, looking away and pulling up handfuls of grass. Happily ever after would never be his.

Alex poked Tyler again. "There's nothing wrong with wanting to get married and have kids and all that stuff."

"Sure," Tyler said. "You live your idealistic white-picket-fence dream life and I am going to just have lots of sex with lots of people."

Alex sighed and lay down beside him. "I bet you'll find someone to settle down with some day too. You just wait and see. You will too, Harry," he added, smiling over at him and sounding completely sincere. "There's a girl out there for you too."

"Thanks," Harry said, forcing a smile for him. He really wasn't sure he wanted a girl, or a boy, to settle down with even if he did break his deal.

* * *

Harry slept late the next morning and was woken by Tyler shaking his shoulder. "Get up. We've got company."

"We do?"

"Malfoy."

"Oh right, yeah." He sat up, rubbing his eyes. "You said we wouldn't have to see him."

"I mean Draco."

That got Harry's attention. "Why's he here?"

"Apparently their house has a bundimun infestation and they all have to leave the house while the exterminators deal with it, and his mother's off visiting friends or something. Either way, we're stuck with him for a few hours while Marcus and Mr Malfoy do whatever it is they do. He's up in my room and I probably shouldn't leave him alone for long. He might break the TV trying to turn it on or something so come up when you're dressed."

Five minutes later Harry entered Tyler's attic room to find Malfoy standing in front of Tyler's TV, watching a wildlife program, but he looked around when he heard the door.

"Hello, Evans."

"Thought you hated all things Muggle."

"I do."

"Look pretty interested to me."

Malfoy sniffed, turning away from the TV. "You're half-blind, you don't know what you're seeing."

"And that's why we're not friends."

Malfoy looked over sharply. "What do you mean by that?"

"Nevermind. Are we still going out?" Harry asked Tyler.

"Yeah, I'm not changing our plans just because he's here."

"What plans?" Malfoy asked.

"We're going to see a film. The Lion King. I'm sure you'll enjoy it. You should ditch the robes though."

Malfoy stared at him. "Excuse me?"

"I don't think he understood anything you said," Harry said with a smirk. "Poor little pureblood."

Malfoy scowled. "I'm far from poor and you can't talk about little. You're still short enough to be a first year."

It was Harry's turn to scowl. "I'm not," he said, although he was smaller than the other two.

"And I understand what he said. We're going to a zoo, and for some reason he wants me to go naked. Why are you laughing?"

"We're not going to a zoo," Harry told him between sniggers while Tyler laughed uproariously. "We're going to the cinema. It's like a giant one of those," he explained, pointing to the TV. "We sit in a big room and watch it play a film. A long moving picture."

"About lions?"

"In this case."

"Right," Malfoy said, frowning at Tyler, who was still sniggering. "And why do you want me to go naked?"

"I don't," Tyler managed to say. "Amusing as that would be. You need to put on Muggle clothes though."

"Absolutely not!"

Tyler shrugged. "Then you can stay here and sit in our living room for a few hours, 'cause we're not staying in just for you."

Malfoy opened and closed his mouth, looking between them like he could glare them into submission, but when they both just calmly looked back, his shoulders slumped. "I don't have any Muggle clothes."

"Figured as much," Tyler said, going to his wardrobe. "You're about my size. These should fit."

He took out a pair of jeans and a button up shirt and tossed them to Malfoy, who looked at them as if they were covered in hippogriff manure.

"Is this really necessary?"

"Yes, otherwise the Muggles will stare and point and make fun of you."

Grumbling unpleasantly about Muggles, Malfoy took the clothes to the bathroom and got changed. It was strange to see him when he came out again; Harry had never seen Malfoy look awkward before.

"This is horribly uncomfortable."

"You get used to it," Tyler told him. "Let's go."

They took a bus into town and Malfoy twitched every time someone came near him. When they got off, he manoeuvred himself to stand between Harry and Tyler, using them as barriers against the rest of the world.

In the cinema, Tyler waved off Harry's offer to pay for his own ticket, saying he had plenty enough for all of them. Malfoy didn't even offer, staring at the unmoving posters.

"You guys want popcorn? Sweets? Drinks?"

Harry peered around the people ahead of them in the queue. "I haven't had Muggles sweets in ages. You mind if I have some M&Ms and a coke?"

"That's fine. Malfoy?"

Malfoy dragged his gaze away from a poster for Forrest Gump. "What?"

"Food, drink. You want any?"

Malfoy looked at the sweets on shelves behind the counter and the drink dispensers, nothing of which he recognised. "Whatever Evans is having, but if I get poisoned by some weird Muggle food I'll hex you and the people who run this place. Is this lion picture as boring as that one with the man on the bench?"

"That's not the film," Harry told him. "Keep your voice down, we don't need the attention."

Malfoy grumbled, but didn't say anything else to display his ignorance and they got to the front of the queue. Tyler ordered their tickets and snacks, passed them round, and they headed on through. Malfoy made a fuss about sitting in the cinema chairs, claiming were filthy and probably carrying all kinds of diseases, but Tyler grabbed his arm and pulled him down. He immediately stood up again.

"I want to sit between you two. I'm not sitting beside some horrid Muggle."

They decided not to argue with him and Harry shifted down a seat. Malfoy sat, muttering unpleasant things about Muggles the entire time. Harry worried he'd talk all through the film, which would not only be annoying but probably get them thrown out, but from the minute the first song started, Malfoy's gaze was fixed on the screen and the only time he spoke was to tell the young couple in front of them to shut up.

Later, on the way back to Tyler's house, Malfoy grudgingly admitted that he enjoyed the film a lot, but threatened to hex them both if they told anyone at school.

The walk from the bus stop to Tyler's took them past the river and they were halfway back when they came across a group of teenagers lounging in the grass. Tyler scowled when he saw them but said nothing. Harry noticed his Muggle neighbour, Charlie in the group with her Jack Russell, and the boy called Johnny who led to Tyler and Charlie's falling out at New Years. Presumably they hadn't made up because Tyler ignored the group as they walked past, but the dog saw him and came tearing over, tail wagging with the boundless cheer that dogs were known for.

"No, Sammy, go away. Shoo, go on."

"Sammy, come here, boy!" Charlie called and Sammy ran back to her, but Johnny, who'd stripped off his shirt and had a cigarette between his lips, looked over with a nasty grin and called, "Hey, faggot, off to have a big gay orgy?"

"Fuck off, Johnny," Tyler called back, and there was sniggers from the rest of the group.

"I'd invite you to join us," Malfoy said in his best drawl, "but I wouldn't put my dick in any of you filthy Muggles."

"Malfoy! Shut up, just—"

"The fuck did you call me?" Johnny said angrily, getting to his feet. A couple of others did as well and Tyler swore. Harry couldn't blame him. Johnny wasn't much taller than Malfoy, but he had clearly defined muscles along his torso and arms and could probably beat the crap out of all three of them. His two friends were equally well built; one of them looked as if he could have been Gregory Goyle's Muggle doppelgänger.

But Malfoy looked at Johnny with his usual haughty expression. "I called you a Muggle. It means you're a dirty-blooded ape who ought to be grateful I'm even deigning to talk to you."

"I'll show you grateful, nancy boy," Johnny said, tossing his cigarette down and putting it out with his heel before advancing with his fists clenched.

"We should run now," Tyler said, backing up. Harry nodded his agreement, but Malfoy stood his ground. He lifted his hand towards his chest, where his breast pocket would be if he had his robes on, then realised he didn't have wand on him and went pale. Johnny noticed and grinned.

"Get 'em."

Harry couldn't help it. He made no clearly worded wish, even silently, but the moment the Goyle doppelgänger came close to grabbing him, he thrust out a hand and the boy was thrown backwards like he'd been hit with a truck. Johnny already had Malfoy on his knees and sporting a bloody nose, while Tyler was pinned to the grass and shouting mercy as his arm was twisted behind his back. The other kids cheered Johnny and his friends on and when Harry pushed the big one back a few more got to their feet with the obvious intention of joining in the fight.

"Stop!" Harry cried, and everyone in the vicinity went still as statues. "Oh crap."

He looked around, hoping there was no one in the distance that saw, and hurriedly made a plan to fix it. He shoved away the boy pinning down Tyler, making him fall over like an action figure, then touched Tyler and made a Wish. Tyler jerked to life in mid-shout, realised he wasn't pinned anymore, and scrambled to his feet. He looked around at the other frozen people.

"Whoa…"

"I'm fixing this," Harry said.

"You did this? Fuck. The Ministry's going to be on us any minute."

"No, it's fine. Just… give me a sec."

He went to Malfoy next, tugging his shirt free from Johnny's grip, and then unfroze him. Malfoy got to his feet, wiping his bloody nose and looking around at the still frozen Muggles.

"Did you do this?"

"Yeah, just stand over there. I need to sort this out."

"How are you going to sort this out? The Ministry's going to expel you for this—you could get arrested, using magic against Muggles."

"It's fine, just stand over there!"

Tyler and Malfoy stood to one side. Harry faced the group of Muggles, took a deep breath, and unfroze them.

Johnny blinked and almost fell as his punch hit thin air. "What the…"

"Go back to your friends," Harry ordered. "Sit down and forget you ever had a fight. All of you forget you ever saw me or Malfoy or Tyler. You never saw us and none of you tried to attack us."

Tyler and Malfoy's jaws dropped as the other teens did exactly that and the group continued talking as though nothing had ever happened.

"How did you do that?" Malfoy demanded.

"Tell you later. They can't see us, so come on."

"What do you mean they can't see us?" Tyler asked, but followed Harry down the path.

"We're invisible."

"That's funny because I can see us," Malfoy said.

"I'm letting you see us. Just shut up, both of you."

A narrow alley took them from the riverside to Tyler's street and Harry stopped them in the middle of it. He touched Malfoy's face, Wished away the blood and healed the split lip, then drew his hand back. Malfoy blinked, touching a finger to his mouth.

"How—"

"You hurt?" Harry asked Tyler.

"Sore shoulder, but I'm fine. What—"

"Forget that we had a fight. Forget that we saw those other teenagers. Forget that you saw me do magic."

Their eyes glazed over for a moment before they shook it off and carried on their way.

"Hey, you okay?" Tyler asked Harry as they approached his house.

"Yeah, why?"

"You're shaking."

Harry glanced at his hands, which were trembling slightly, and shoved them in his pockets. "I'm fine."

"Are you going to have a seizure?" Malfoy asked, rubbing his mouth.

"No, I'm okay, really."

"Well, we're back now so if you do at least it's not in the street."

Harry forced a smile and followed the other two boys into the house.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

For the first time that Harry could ever remember, he got a cake for his birthday.

He almost forgot about the whole thing. Birthdays had always been such a private thing for him, not something anyone else ever celebrated with him, that he hadn't thought about it in the week after returning from Tyler's. When he woke up on the thirty-first, he didn't even realise what day it was until he went downstairs for breakfast and found a pile of gifts on the kitchen table, several balloons floating about the ceiling, and a great big banner strung across the windows.

It was a distinctly novel sensation, having someone actually celebrate his birthday with him, and strange to have so many gifts. His friends had sent one each and Malfoy sent a history book that was entirely too rare for Harry to refuse to accept, though he wasn't sure how Malfoy even knew when his birthday was.

All the rest of the gifts were from Sirius—a couple of books, a cloak, tricks and toys and various small items like a keyring and magnets. But the most notable was the sleek black Nimbus 2001.

"I was going to get you a Firebolt," Sirius said as Harry ran his hands over the smooth wood, "but Remus said that was too excessive for someone under flying restrictions. But you said you liked flying and I've got one for myself so I can go out with you." He paused, then asked, "Do you like it?"

Harry looked up, grinning. "Yes!"

Sirius relaxed, returning the smile. He'd apologised for his attitude before the full moon, admitting that he'd been expecting Harry to be too much like James.

He wrote to Malfoy to thank him for the book, but insisted that it didn't mean Malfoy could bribe his way into friendship with him. Malfoy wrote back offering to take him to the Quidditch World Cup.

"No fair!"

"What's not fair?" Sirius asked, pausing as he walked past Harry's open bedroom door. Harry spun in his seat.

"Malfoy has tickets to the Quidditch World Cup!"

"Didn't you tell him to stop writing to you?"

"That's beside the point. He's got tickets and he's invited me to go!"

"Ah," Sirius said. "He really wants to be your friend."

Harry moaned unhappily. "This is… it's a trick. It has to be. He can't do this to me!"

Remus appeared behind Sirius. "Who can't do what?"

"Malfoy sent him an invitation to the World Cup."

"Did he? Well that's not an opportunity you should pass up."

"But if I go that means I accept his offer of friendship," Harry objected weakly.

"Is that really such a terrible thing?" Remus asked.

Both Harry and Sirius stared at him. "It's _Malfoy_ ," Harry said. "You taught him for a year, you know what he's like."

"I know he was raised by prejudiced parents, likely around children who were also raised by prejudiced parents, and the only way to battle those kinds of attitudes is to show them that the things they hate aren't as terrible as they think. Befriending you could be a start towards changing Draco's attitudes."

"Or it's a ploy to try and change Harry's attitude," Sirius said, frowning. "I really don't think it's a good idea for him to be hanging about the Malfoys, Moony. If Lucius figures out who he is…"

"He wouldn't hurt me, would he?" Harry asked, glancing between the two men and realising that they knew something about Lucius Malfoy that he didn't. "I know he's into all that pureblood stuff, but… I mean, I'm a half-blood, not a complete Muggleborn."

"You're also the Boy Who Lived," Sirius said, "and Malfoy was a big supporter of Voldemort back in the day."

Harry looked down at the letter in his hands. Remus stepped over, putting a hand on Harry's shoulder. "Harry, he wouldn't hurt you. Whatever Lucius Malfoy is, he's not an idiot. If you want to go then I think you should, but it's your choice."

"I don't think you should go," Sirius said, "but Moony's right: Malfoy probably wouldn't hurt you and it's your choice. But if you do go, I'm giving you a Portkey that'll bring you straight back here if you need to."

"I'll think about it," Harry told them.

He spent half the night thinking about it, lying in bed and staring at his ceiling, and it was three in the morning before he realised that for every reason he could think of not to go, he found some way to explain it away. Malfoy was a git, but he was clearly trying to be friendly and, as Remus said, that could be the start of changing his attitudes to Muggleborns. The Malfoys might figure out who he was, but they might not. Lucius was a Death Eater, but Voldemort was gone, living as some disembodied spirit. Lucius might attack him for being the Boy Who Lived if he found out, but Harry was more powerful than Albus Dumbledore and Lord Voldemort so Lucius Malfoy was no threat to him.

And behind all that was a massive desire to see the World Cup match. Other people might say it was a once in a lifetime opportunity for most people, but for him it really was. He had four years until his contract was up. Why shouldn't he do something enjoyable while he had the chance?

* * *

Two days before the Quidditch World Cup, Harry woke from a dream that left the scar on his forehead burning. The dream started to slip away as soon as he woke, but Voldemort was in it, of that much he was sure, and Peter Pettigrew and an old man, but he couldn't remember the details, nor was he sure why his scar hurt so much, like someone had pressed a white-hot wire to his forehead.

He didn't let it worry him for long. The next afternoon he was going to the Malfoys. He packed a bag the morning before and spent the rest of the time impatiently waiting for lunch to come. He ate quickly, to Remus' amusement, and then had to let Sirius turn his medical ID bracelet into a Portkey before he left.

"Just say Prongs and it'll activate, bring you straight back here, alright? The full moon is tonight, but Moony'll be in our bedroom and the Portkey comes to the living room so you don't have to worry." He paused, still holding Harry's hand. "Are you sure you want to go? We can find something else to make up for missing the World Cup."

"I'm going, Sirius. I'll be fine, I swear. I've got the Portkey _and_ I can Apparate _and_ I can defend myself if someone attacks me. I won't let myself be left alone with Mr Malfoy. If he tries to hurt me I have permission to use magic against him. Don't trust Mrs Malfoy, no matter how nice she is. You've told me all this, Sirius."

Sirius frowned, clearly still unhappy, but said nothing more as they headed outside. Once again Harry would be taking the Knight Bus. He wasn't looking forward to it.

"We'll see you in a few days," Remus said when the bus arrived, smiling at him. "Have fun."

"Be careful, kid," Sirius added.

"I will," he promised.

Half an hour later, he climbed unsteadily off the bus and swore that next time he would Wish things more comfortable, attention be damned. It was possibly the worst method of travel he'd ever put up with.

Draco met him outside the manor, a large imposing grey building, and led him through some wrought iron gates and up the drive. Inside they went down a short corridor to a drawing room, where he met Narcissa. She was a harsh-looking woman with blue eyes and blonde hair, but her face softened when she smiled and rose gracefully from her chair to greet him.

"Narcissa Malfoy," she introduced. "It's nice to meet you, Harry."

"It's nice to meet you too, Mrs Malfoy. Thank you for having me," he said, shaking the hand she held out.

Her eyes fell on his bracelet. "Are you ill?"

"I have epilepsy. It means I have seizures."

"I know what epilepsy is. I was a healer before I had Draco."

"Oh," he said, flushing. "Sorry, I didn't know."

"I wouldn't expect you to. Draco will show you to the room you'll be staying in tonight."

Draco took him the long route, giving him a tour of the manor as they went, showing him the poshest rooms, pointing out portraits of his more notable ancestors, and giving him a history of the house.

"That's Father's cellar; we're not allowed in there. Over there—"

"Your father has his own cellar?"

"It's just to separate it from the wine cellar in the kitchen, but there's nothing in there. I sneak in every few years just to check. I don't know why he forbids me from going in, it's completely empty. Anyway, this is my uncle Tiberius. He died when I was nine. Tried to keep a dragon in his basement, burnt the house down. Shame really, he gave great birthday presents…"

The guest room, when they finally reached it, was much bigger than Harry's bedroom at home and Draco's room was even larger than that. He only had one poster on the wall, of the Holyhead Harpies, and everything was spotlessly clean and tidy (a huge difference to Tyler's room, which was perpetually messy, or Harry's own, which he only tidied when it got _too_ messy). His books were carefully arranged on the shelves, there wasn't a single sock discarded on the floor, and there wasn't so much as a crinkle in his bed sheets.

"I thought we could go flying, seeing as we'll be watching professionals tomorrow," Draco suggested. "You can borrow my old Comet Two Sixty."

Harry hesitated and Draco raised an eyebrow.

"You _can_ fly, can't you?"

"You going to catch me if I fall?"

"Are you really that terrible?"

"No," he replied with a scowl. "But if I have a seizure…"

"Oh. Yes, I suppose that would be bad."

"You 'suppose'," Harry muttered, rolling his eyes. "Is that what you'll say when I've fallen to my death? 'I suppose it was a bad idea.' "

"Do you want to go flying or not? I'll stick close if that's what you need, though it's a dreadful way to fly a Firebolt."

"We can go. But just so you know, if I fall off and you don't catch me, I'm going to haunt you for the rest of your life."

Harry didn't fall, but Draco kept his word and flew close. The Comet 260 was miserable compared to the Firebolt and even to Harry's new Nimbus 2001, but wasn't as bad as the school brooms that Harry was used to riding.

They flew most of the afternoon, going in only when it was time for dinner. Harry finally met Lucius then.

"So, Harry, you're starting your third year this September, correct? What subjects are you taking?"

"Arithmancy and Ancient Runes."

"Only two?"

"I wanted to take Care of Magical Creatures as well, but then Professor Hagrid started teaching it…"

"Ah," Lucius said, "I quite understand. If you struggle at all with Ancient Runes, I'm sure Draco won't mind assisting you in your studies. It's one of his better subjects."

"Thank you, Father."

Lucius hardly glanced at his son, asking Harry, "What are your best subjects?"

"Charms and History of Magic."

"What do you plan to do for a career?"

"I haven't really decided," Harry said, wishing he'd stop asking so many questions, no matter how harmless they appeared to be.

"You've got plenty of time to choose," Narcissa said. "What do you like to do in your spare time?"

"Read, mostly. I'm a bit of a book worm."

Narcissa smiled. "As am I. I do enjoy a good book. It's an excellent way to relax, don't you agree?"

He nodded and despite Sirius' warning about Narcissa's niceness he found himself warming to her.

* * *

Despite a history of sleeping in strange and unfamiliar places, Harry had difficulty nodding off that night. There was just something terribly intimidating about Malfoy Manor.

Not that the lack of sleep bothered him come morning, when the excitement of the coming day kept him energised. After breakfast they got into a horse-drawn carriage that drove them for almost an hour before stopping beside what appeared to be a completely empty field. Harry had to bite his lip to keep from laughing as he watched the three Malfoys walk across it with almost identical looks of disgust on their faces. He wondered if they'd ever walked on grass that hadn't been tamed to within an inch of its life before.

Eventually they stopped beside a deflated basketball.

"What is it?" Narcissa asked, looking down at it in disgust.

"Isn't it the Portkey?" Draco said.

"Yes, but what is it?"

"God knows," Lucius sneered. "Those idiots at the Ministry chose all kinds of rubbish for these things, it's disgraceful."

Harry considered explaining what a basketball was, but decided it would take too much time and effort. Instead he asked, "When does it leave?"

Lucius checked a gold pocket watch. "One minute and twelve seconds."

A heartbeat passed.

"We should probably pick it up," Draco said.

None of them moved. Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes and bent to pick it up. He held it out. With clear reluctance and a slight shudder from Draco, the three Malfoys each placed a finger on it. They stood there in awkward silence, Lucius watching his pocket watch, and then—

The Portkey activated and then they slammed back down on a misty moor. Two men at a table took their Portkey and threw it into a box with numerous others. Lucius exchanged short words with one of them, they got given a campsite name, and they set off. As they approached the campsite, Lucius thrust a handful of Muggle notes at Harry and told him to pay—"You're familiar with these sorts," he sneered, and Harry grit his teeth—and then they headed through the busy camp for their spot. There, Narcissa erected a tent with a few sharp flicks of her wand, and they retreated inside to a three-bedroom flat. Narcissa and Lucius both looked immensely relieved to be inside and Draco actually sighed aloud.

The match wasn't until the evening. They spent the rest of the morning relaxing in the tent, but in the afternoon Harry convinced Draco to go out and explore the campsite with him. They got a few souvenirs from a salesman—Harry got a model of the Irish seeker Aiden Lynch, a programme, and an Omniscope. The Omniscope salesman was pitched not far from one selling Omnioculars and Draco stopped Harry from approaching, taunting both salesmen into defending their individual wares. Harry stepped in when it looked like the two salesmen might start fighting.

"Oh, don't do that!" the Omniocular man cried when Harry went to the Omniscope stand. "Why look with one eye when you can look with two?"

Harry handed over his money, took an Omniscope, and turned.

"If it makes you feel better, I would buy yours if I _could_ see with two eyes," he said, pointing out his blind eye. The salesman's jaw dropped and he looked between Harry and Draco. Draco grinned.

"You—you did that on purpose!" the man cried.

"It was fun," Draco said, and Harry pulled him away before the salesman decided to hex him.

At sundown, they finally went to the pitch. Their tickets put them in the top box and they were the last ones to arrive. There were several important Ministry personnel there, and filling half the row in front of them was the Weasley family, all except Molly Weasley.

"Good lord, Arthur," Lucius said softly. "What did you have to sell to get seats in the Top Box? Surely your house wouldn't have fetched this much?"

Mr Weasley didn't react to his comment except for his ears to turn bright red. Harry sat behind Ginny, who twisted in her seat to speak to him.

"I didn't know you were friends with Malfoy."

"Only recently," Harry told her, ignoring the death glares her brothers were sending him. "It was my only chance to see the match."

"Oh. Fair enough, I guess," she said.

Ron pulled on her arm. "Ginny, stop talking to that snake."

Ginny rolled her eyes, held up a fist for Harry to bump, which he did, then faced forwards again. Since the end of their first year, they had a friendly acquaintance developed from shared experience. If they'd shared any classes and had the chance to interact more, Harry thought they might even be friends; Ginny seemed more likeable than her brothers.

Ron eyed Harry nastily. "Stay away from my sister."

"Eat dirt, Weasley," Harry replied, but without any real malice. He didn't much care for Ron, but he didn't hate him. Any response of Ron's was cut off when Ludo Bagman came rushing in to introduce the game.

Harry looked at Draco oddly when he stuck his fingers in his ears as the veela walked onto the pitch, but forgot all about him when they started dancing, instead staring transfixed at the beautiful women and thinking that he'd fly out onto the pitch and show them some of his magic. He might not be much to look at, but he could charm the pants off any of them if he just—

"Good Lord! Sorry, folks, just a sudden infestation of butterflies in the top box. That is odd."

Harry blinked and glanced up, seeing that Bagman was right.

"Is this part of the match?" Ginny asked her father in front of them.

"I… don't think so."

Everyone in the box was equally surprised and Harry quickly schooled his face into a similar expression of shock and Wished them away.

"And they've gone," Bagman said. "How very bizarre. But now please kindly put your wands in the air… for the Irish National Team Mascots!"

The match was incredible. Although he was supposed to be supporting Ireland, Harry found himself cheering on the Bulgarian Seeker, Victor Krum. He made Harry wish more than ever that he could play Quidditch.

The next time the veela started dancing, Harry took Draco's lead and shoved his fingers in his ears and shut his eyes. The last thing he needed was to let his magic get out of control.

Ireland won, although Krum caught the snitch. Harry and Draco leapt out of their seats cheering, not even noticing the dirty look Lucius gave them, or the glance Narcissa gave Lucius that silently told him not to berate them for their behaviour.

Harry and Draco spent the walk back to the campsite avidly discussing the match and the players. When they got back to the tent, Narcissa made up some hot chocolate for them both and only then did they realise Lucius wasn't there.

"Where's Father?"

"He joined some friends of his, darling. I'm going to join him. You two boys can look after yourself for a short while, but try not to stay up too late. We've got one of the earliest Portkeys home in the morning."

A short while turned into a couple of hours, which turned into a couple more, and then there were screams outside their tent. When they investigated, they found a group of wizards levitating the campsite's Muggle owner and his family overhead, controlling them like puppeteers.

"We should get to the woods. Come on."

Harry followed Draco to the woods beside the campsite and they stood just beyond the treeline, watching the growing group of wizards. Harry wanted to help the Muggles, but he didn't know how without potentially putting them in more danger or angering the wizards below, who might move on to hurting other people.

"Scared, Evans?"

Harry glanced at Draco, whose arms were folded over his chest as he watched, leant against a tree looking perfectly relaxed.

"No."

But he glanced at his bracelet. If ever there was a time to use it… but he couldn't just run away. He probably shouldn't leave Draco alone, for one, even if he did look almost bored with what was going on. He could offer to take him with him, but then he'd have a world of explaining to do, and Draco probably wouldn't want to leave when his parents were still here somewhere.

"Do you think…"

Draco glanced at him questioningly. "What?"

"Your parents. Are they out there?"

Draco looked back to the large group. "I don't know. Maybe."

"Is this the kind of thing you agree with? Torturing Muggles?"

"This isn't torture. It's just… a bit of fun."

"A bit of fun? You think _that's_ a bit of fun?" he asked, pointing at the child who was spinning like a top, their head flopping limply from side to side. "That kid can't be more than seven."

Draco didn't look at him. "They're just Muggles."

"They're people just like us."

"Muggles aren't like us. We're better than them. They're just… they're just Muggles."

Harry didn't get a chance to argue further. The sky above them suddenly lit up bright green. They twisted to look up and Harry's mouth went dry. A giant skull with a serpent protruding from its mouth floated ominously in the sky. He knew that sign.

The Dark Mark.

Draco had gone white.

"The tent—" he said, then he ran out the woods. Harry followed him and when they got there, Lucius and Narcissa were already inside, both pale. Narcissa grabbed Draco and hugged him.

"Get your things, we're leaving. Quickly."

"How—?"

"We'll side-along Apparate you."

Harry grabbed his bag, which only needed zipping up before he shrugged it onto his shoulders. When Lucius reached for his arm, Harry jerked away.

"I have an a emergency Portkey. I'm going home."

"What?" Draco said, looking around. "But you live with Muggles, how did you get a Portkey?"

"Professor Snape gave it to me," Harry lied. "For emergencies. It'll take me somewhere safe."

"Some might take offence that you don't feel safe with us," Narcissa said. Harry couldn't tell if she was offended or not.

Harry looked to Lucius. "I know what kind of people you are," he said quietly, ready to run or fight if Lucius turned on him.

"You know nothing of us," Lucius replied coldly, and stepped back to stand with his family. "Do what you will. The moment you leave, you're no longer our concern."

"Father—Harry, wait, you can't just—"

"Draco, it is his decision to make, and he's made it," Lucius interrupted Draco. "We're leaving now."

Draco shot Harry one last despairing look before Narcissa clutched his shoulders and they both disappeared. Lucius gave him one last cold look, then vanished as well, and Harry touched his bracelet.

"Prongs," he said.

The next thing he was aware of was being sat on the sofa at home, feeling the familiar post-seizure fatigue while Remus sat beside him and Padfoot was at his feet, head resting on Harry's thigh.

"Are you alright?" Remus asked, and Padfoot lifted his head and whined.

"There were Death Eaters," Harry said, and suddenly it was Sirius at his feet and Remus looked startled. "After the game, there were Death Eaters torturing this Muggle family and the campsite got trampled and then the Dark Mark showed up."

Remus inhaled sharply. Sirius was pale.

"Were you hurt?"

Harry shook his head. "We hid in the woods. I'm fine."

"Why didn't you come back sooner?"

"I didn't want to leave Draco alone. His parents were… they weren't there."

He didn't sleep well that night. He lay in bed, thinking about the dream he had three days ago and how his scar burned when he woke. Now, thirteen years after it was last seen, the Dark Mark showed up. What did it mean? Did it mean anything or was it just a coincidence? But the last time his scar hurt like that was when he fought with Quirrell over the Philosopher's Stone, while Quirrell was possessed by Voldemort. Voldemort definitely hadn't been anywhere near him three days ago, so why did it hurt? And why did the Dark Mark show up so soon afterwards?

* * *

On the last night of the holiday Sirius came bounding into Harry's room while he was packing and handed over his signed permission form for Hogsmeade, and the Marauder's Map. Remus stood in the doorway, an indulgent smile on his face.

"So you can carry on your dad's legacy," Sirius said. "Do you remember how to work it?"

Harry nodded, taking the map with a grin. "Thanks. Does this mean if I get in trouble I can blame it on you guys?"

"You can blame Sirius," Remus said. "No one will doubt he's been encouraging you to get into mischief."

Sirius gasped in mock offence. "What are you trying to imply, Moony?"

"I'm not implying anything, Padfoot. I'm stating outright that you're a terrible influence on the next generation."

"Well, it's a hard job, but someone's got to do it."

They were late getting to platform nine and three-quarters the next morning and most of the compartments were full by the time Harry got onto the train. He stowed his trunk and walked along the carriages, looking for any of his friends. He saw Hermione and Neville, but they were packed in a compartment with some Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws from their own year so he only stopped briefly to say hello before carrying on.

In one carriage, he passed Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle as they were taunting Ron Weasley. Harry arrived just in time to hear Malfoy say gleefully, "Don't tell me you don't know. My father told me ages ago, heard it from Cornelius Fudge himself, but then my father's always been associated with the top people at the Ministry. Oh, Evans," he said, noticing Harry, "did I tell you about what's happening at the school this year?"

"No, and I don't care either," Harry told him bluntly, moving past.

Malfoy caught his shoulder. "I thought we were friends, Evans."

"We weren't friends, Malfoy. We might have been taking steps along the path to one day becoming friends, but then you showed the kind of person you really are and it's not someone I want to be friends with. I don't know why you decided you were going to try and befriend me in the first place, but just don't bother, alright?"

He eventually found Cid and Tyler sitting with Alex Stone and a girl Cid introduced as his sister, Layla. Harry was surprised by her; he knew they were only half-siblings but the only similarity in their appearances was their dark hair. Cid was tall, broad, and very obviously of Mediterranean descent, whereas Layla was small, pale, and delicate. She looked like a strong wind would knock her over, but her face was cheerful and she clearly adored Cid as much as he cared for her.

They spent the ride chatting about their summers. Tyler's was uneventful outside of Harry's visit. Cid had attended the World Cup, but they didn't talk about it too much, as his sister, Harry, and Alex had gone too, and Tyler had already heard the pertinent details from Alex. Cid was far more interested in bragging about the Welsh girl he'd met at the campsite and shared his first kiss with.

It was raining heavily when they reached Hogsmeade; they got drenched just walking to the carriages and then into the castle. The Sorting that year seemed to last a lifetime—Layla joined her big brother in Slytherin, to the delight of both—and after eating Dumbledore stunned them all with the introduction of Mad-Eye Moody as their new Defence teacher and the announcement that they would be hosting the Triwizard Tournament that year.

Harry had seen mentions of the Tournament in books before but didn't know exactly what it was. After Dumbledore's explanation, he murmured agreements that it sounded fun, but he wasn't interested in joining like his envious classmates. He didn't doubt that he could win the competition hands down, but he wasn't interested in school glory or the attention of being a competitor. Thankfully, he didn't even have the option as the competition was limited to those over the age of seventeen.

He was annoyed when Malfoy all but cornered him in the bathroom the next morning. They were the only ones in there and Harry had no interest in getting into a fight with him.

"What's it going to take for you to not hate me?" Malfoy demanded.

"Try being a decent human being. Why are you so intent on it anyway? You never cared before I had that seizure back in the library last term."

Malfoy looked at Harry thoughtfully for a moment. Harry really hoped he wasn't about to confess his undying love, suddenly recalling those comments from Cid and Tyler last term.

But all Malfoy said was, "I know who you are."

"I would expect you to after harassing me for so long. What d'you want, a medal?"

Malfoy folded his arms over his chest. "You're the Boy Who Lived."

Harry's stomach dropped. He tried to keep his face blank. "That's ridiculous."

"I saw it—the scar. When you had that seizure. Whatever spell it is you use to hide it, it broke when you were twitching about all over the place. You might want to be careful about that."

Harry's mouth was dry. "Why are you telling me this now? Who else knows? Who have you told?"

"No one. I've kept your secrets. I haven't even told my parents."

"This is why you've been trying to befriend me? You just want the Boy Who Lived on your side?"

Malfoy shrugged. "You wanted to know. Now I've told you."

"And what? If I keep saying no you'll spill my secret?"

"No," Malfoy said, and Harry didn't believe it for a second. "I've haven't told anyone yet and I won't. You've got the wrong idea about me, Evans."

"I really don't think I have. You're a Muggle-hating prick who's only being nice because you want powerful friends."

"You're a third year; you're not that powerful. As for the Muggles, they deserve it. I heard it was a Muggle that blinded your eye and caused your epilepsy. How can you defend them after that?"

"It was a wizard that killed my parents and tried to kill me. Wizards aren't better than Muggles. We're all people. We're all made of shit."

"Pretty miserable outlook on life for a thirteen year old."

"Fourteen, and you'd have a miserable outlook on life if you'd met the people I have. No one would believe you even if you did tell. You can't prove it."

Malfoy lifted his chin. "I could if I wanted to. All I have to do is cause you to have a seizure then point out a certain scar, and I've been doing a little research on epilepsy so don't think I couldn't do it."

"For someone who's so eager to have me as a friend, you're doing a good job of making me hate you more. Threatening people isn't how you make friends, Malfoy."

"Well being nice isn't working, so why shouldn't I move on to less conventional methods?"

"How about you just stop? What's it going to take to get it through your head—I. Don't. Want. To be. Your. Friend."

"Fine, so don't be," Malfoy sneered, shoving him away. "Just remember there's nothing illegal about being polite."

The confrontation made Harry forget to take his anticonvulsant that morning—a bad start to finally being able to manage it himself instead of going to the Hospital Wing every morning—and between that and the worry about Malfoy knowing who he was, he wasn't surprised when he found himself lying on the floor of the Potions classroom that afternoon, his head pounding. The rest of his classmates were gone, but Snape must have had a free period because he sat watching from a nearby stool.

He'd hit his head when he fell so Snape walked him up to the Hospital Wing to get checked over, and mentioned that he'd sent Jia with a note to Professor Vector explaining Harry's absence.

"Can't believe I'm missing my first Arithmancy class," Harry grumbled. "What a crappy way to start the year."

"Language," Snape scolded but without much severity, then said, "You seemed distracted in class today. Is there something on your mind that could have triggered the seizure?"

He stopped suddenly and Snape turned to him questioningly. "My scar—did it show when I had the seizure?"

"Not that I noticed. Why?"

"Malfoy knows who I am. He saw me have a seizure last term and he said my scar showed. He told me this morning and I was so distracted I forgot to take my potion."

Snape gestured for him to continue walking. "He discovered this last term and only told you now?"

"He's been trying to be friends with me since then. He was being nice at the end of last year, he kept writing to me in the summer, and he took me to the World Cup match."

Snape looked at him sharply. "You were there? With the Malfoys? Was Black or Lupin with you?"

Harry shook his head. "Just me, Malfoy, and his parents. I had an emergency Portkey though. Sirius set my bracelet up. He was worried Mr Malfoy might figure out who I was and hurt me."

"If Draco knows, he may have told Lucius already. You put yourself at risk going there alone."

"I wanted to see the match, and Malfoy hasn't told anyone and he says he won't, but I was thinking I should probably make him forget anyway."

Snape's mouth tightened, pausing outside the Hospital Wing doors. "I understand the desire, but I cannot condone you memory charming people."

"I've done it before. I know I just have to be careful about my wording."

"I remember," Snape said sharply, apparently still bitter about the incident in his class a year ago. Harry decided not to mention his bit of magic against Muggles this summer. "Nevertheless, memory charms should be used with caution. The human mind is a delicate thing; it shouldn't be fiddled with on a whim. If Draco is keeping this secret for now, leave it. Try and find out what he wants."

"He wants to be my friend. That's what he says, anyway."

"In that case, be careful about refusing him. People often turn vicious when they're rejected. Only resort to memory charms if you have no other choice."

* * *

A fight broke out before dinner that day when Malfoy started taunting Ron Weasley because of a news article in the _Daily Prophet_ that painted Mr Weasley in a bad light. Ron and Seamus Finnigan leapt on Malfoy and started hitting him, and Crabbe and Goyle jumped in to defend their friend, and Malfoy managed to wriggle out of the pile. He had a split lip and his hair was a mess, but he drew his wand and aimed it at Ron's back. Ron was grappling with Crabbe and they just happened to twist when Malfoy shot off a spell so it missed them by a hair. Moody came clomping into the Entrance Hall, broke the fighters apart with a quick spell, and then turned Malfoy into a ferret.

Harry hadn't formed much of an opinion of Moody beyond the general sort of respect that he had towards any law enforcement personnel, but that vanished when he saw Moody bouncing the ferret up and down, driving it higher and higher and hitting the floor harder and harder. He didn't care how many dark wizards Moody put behind bars and it didn't matter that it was Malfoy being attacked, because there was nothing Harry hated more than a bully.

The Slytherin third years had their first Defence class of the year the next day. Harry sat at the back, listening to Moody lecture them on Shield Charms and what they were actually useful against. He clearly knew what he was talking about, speaking with the experience of someone who'd been out there and seen it all first hand, but he wasn't as engaging as Remus, and it didn't change Harry's opinion of the man. He was still a bully.

He kept Harry behind after the class. When everyone else filed out, Harry reluctantly approached the front desk.

"You were quiet today, Evans," Moody said. Harry wasn't sure what to say to that, so he said nothing. "I've heard good things about you."

"What kind of things?"

Both of Moody's eyes settled on Harry. He didn't like the man, but he couldn't help feeling jealous over his magical blue eye. He wanted one for himself and was thinking of writing to Kirith to see if he could get one. She'd never specified how long he'd have to wait, only ever said 'later'.

"Heard you pick up spell work nice and quick. I saw your file. You're meant to be in the year above, aren't you?"

Harry nodded slowly. Why had Moody been looking at his school file?

"How would you feel about some private lessons?" Moody asked. "If you're as good as your other teachers say, I wouldn't mind teaching you a few things more suited to your age. Maybe some even more advanced stuff."

Harry tried not to let his suspicion show on his face or in his voice. "Why are you offering that? Are you giving private lessons to other students?"

"If they show potential," Moody said gruffly. "It's a dangerous world out there. If I can teach even a few of you how to defend yourselves properly then maybe you can defend others too."

"Isn't that the whole point of Defence classes?"

"Classrooms aren't ideal. A lot of kids, most of them not paying attention, and a curriculum from the Ministry to stick to."

"Oh," Harry said. "Well, thanks for the offer, professor, but no thanks."

"Sure about that, Evans? There aren't many folks that get offers of private tutelage from experienced Aurors."

"I'm fine, thanks."

Moody stared at him for a moment longer, then nodded. "As you like. Let me know if you change your mind."

Harry really doubted he would.

* * *

For the first time at Hogwarts, Harry managed to go the length of September and October without anything remarkable happening. He didn't hear any disembodied voices, his health remained steady, and he didn't blow anything up in Potions classes. He didn't even have any seizures, unless their were such short absence seizures that even his friends didn't notice. He got to just focus on his schoolwork, which was good because Ancient Runes and Arithmancy proved difficult, especially Arithmancy. He'd forgotten how much he disliked mathematics, and had to face up to the fact that his self-education as a child had been lacking in a few of even the basics areas of maths. Professor Vector actually suggested he might prefer to take a different class, but when he insisted on wanted to learn Arithmancy she agreed to spend a few days after classes helping him improve his basics.

Then the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students arrived and the Triwizard tournament began, and Harry's name came hurtling out the Goblet of Fire.

He didn't put it in. He didn't even consider it. He knew he could bypass Dumbledore's ageline, but he really wasn't interested in the attention of being a champion.

And yet his name came out, spit from the burning goblet after the first three champions had been called. Harry, cringing at the angry glares of the Hufflepuffs and the mutters of the rest of the students, walked up to the front of the Great Hall and went through the door that Dumbledore pointed him to. It led to a side room, the same one where, four years earlier, Harry had snuck into the school and tried on the Sorting Hat for the first time.

Cedric Diggory, Fleur Delacour, and Viktor Krum looked over as he came in. Fleur threw a long sheet of silvery hair over her shoulder.

"What is it? Do zey want us back in ze Hall?"

Harry opened his mouth, then shut it again without answering. He had no idea what to say.

Ludo Bagman, who was one of the tournament judges alongside Barty Crouch and the headteachers of the three school, entered the room, smiling broadly.

"Gentlemen, lady, it appears we have a _fourth_ Triwizard champion."

Krum straightened up, looking annoyed. Diggory appeared puzzled. Fleur thought it was a joke. Harry wished it was.

He was glad when Crouch, Dumbledore, Maxime, Karkoroff, Snape, and McGonagall came charging in, just because there were familiar faces who might possibly be sympathetic to his plight.

"Did you put your name in the Goblet of Fire, Harry?" Dumbledore asked him.

"No," he answered honestly. "I swear it, professor, I didn't."

"Ah, but 'e is lying, of course!" Maxime cried.

"This is outrageous!" Karkaroff exploded. "Hogwarts cannot have two champions. It's unacceptable!"

"I don't want to be a champion!" Harry cried. "I didn't put my name in and I don't want to compete."

"You have to," Crouch said. "The rules state that anyone whose name comes out of the Goblet must compete."

"But I'm not even qualified! I'm too young!"

"Then you should not have put your name in the Goblet," Maxime said haughtily.

"I _didn't!_ Can't I just back out?"

"The Goblet creates a binding magical contract," Moody growled from his spot by the door.

"But there's got to be a way to disqualify people, even regularly. What about my health?" Harry asked, looking around at Snape. "Wouldn't that disqualify me? Surely if Kirith said it was too risky because of my epilepsy…"

Snape glanced at Dumbledore, who looked to Crouch and Bagman. Crouch shook his head and Harry's heart sunk.

"Alastor is right. This is a binding magical contract. It cannot be withdrawn on a matter of bad health."

There was more arguing, but in the end it was all for nothing. Harry had to compete. He listened distantly as Crouch described the first task—a challenge of daring, to see how they fared in the face of the unknown—and wondered if they'd let him out of it if he performed badly enough.

When they were dismissed, Snape walked out with him.

"Sir, I didn't put my name in the Goblet. I swear I didn't."

"I believe you," Snape said, and Harry was so grateful that he almost forgot he hated him.

"Who do you think could have done it?"

"I don't know," Snape said, looking troubled.

Harry was greeted with a roar of cheers when he got back to Slytherin. Hands grabbed him and hauled him inside, patting him on the back and shoulders.

"So, how'd you do it?" Malfoy asked, looking impressed.

"I didn't. It wasn't me."

Malfoy nodded. "Of course not. Butterbeer?"

"No, I don't—"

"Why the fuck didn't you tell us?" Cid said, appearing on his left as Tyler appeared on his right.

"Yeah, we're supposed to be friends."

"Nice one, Evans," said Logan Sparrow, cutting off Harry's objections. "Better you than that bloody Hufflepuff. You'd better kick his arse for us."

No one believed he didn't do it, but they were Slytherins so they didn't pester him. They wanted to figure it out themselves or trick it out of him rather than question him until he gave it up.

It took him half an hour to pull away from them all and disappear into the dorms, where he climbed onto his bed, yanked his curtains shut, and lay down with Kiwi hugged tight to his chest. He'd so been hoping this year would go smoothly.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Warning:** Suicide.

 **Chapter 14**

The rest of the school were not as impressed with Harry as the Slytherins. As soon as he, Tyler, and Cid reached the Entrance Hall the next morning and came across other students, Harry was subjected to dirty looks and cruel whispers, and when they entered the Great Hall, every Hufflepuff in there looked at him like he was a walking piece of hippogriff manure. He suddenly found himself not very hungry. He'd written to Sirius last night, explaining what happened, and he now just grabbed a croissant and left to go up to the Owlery.

"Hey, Evans!"

He hunched his shoulders and didn't stop walking, but Malfoy jogged to catch up and fell into step beside him.

"How's it going, champion?"

"Fuck off."

"Ah, like that I see. Well, I just thought you'd like to know that I believe you about not putting your name in."

Harry stopped, turning to stare suspiciously at him. "Why?"

"You're the Boy Who Lived—" (Harry glanced up and down the hall, but they were the only ones there) "—but you've gone to a lot of effort to conceal that. You're hardly going to ruin it now by drawing attention to yourself. You _hate_ attention; anyone with half a brain can see that."

Harry wasn't completely sure he trusted him, but he was grateful nonetheless. "Thanks."

"So, any theories on who did put it in?" Draco asked as they continued walking. Harry shrugged.

"Not really."

"Do you think it's someone who knows who you are, trying to bump off the Boy—" he cut himself off as Harry glared at him. "Alright, alright. But my point stands."

"Possible, but there's not many people who know. Unless you've told someone," he remarked offhandedly while silently Wishing for Malfoy to tell the truth.

"I haven't told a soul. Who else does know?"

"None of your business."

"Dumbledore, I'm guessing," Malfoy mused as though he hadn't heard Harry. "I'm betting Snape does as well, and McGonagall. She looked stressed last night when your name came out. What about your friends? Villiers doesn't; there's no way he could keep his filthy mouth shut about that, but what about Lyle?"

Harry said nothing. Malfoy shrugged. "I'll figure it out."

Malfoy followed him all the way up to the owlery, where Harry called down one of the school owls and gave it his letter to Sirius. Afterwards he got rid of Malfoy by saying he was going to find Hermione and Neville. Malfoy sneered but he didn't insult them, lifting his hand in a lazy wave goodbye as he wandered off.

Harry went first to the library, but neither Hermione nor Neville were there. He found a table far in the back, Wished for the Marauder's Map from his trunk, and searched it for his friends. They were in the Great Hall, but he watched them leave and head upwards towards the library. When they reached it, he deactivated the Map and moved to a point where they would see him when they came further in, and they hurried to join him, sitting at the table.

"We know you didn't put your name in the Goblet of Fire," Hermione said immediately.

"You do?" he said, surprised.

"I looked over and saw your face when Dumbledore called your name. You looked horrified."

"I was. But thank you, really. That makes a grand total of six people who believe I didn't do it."

"Who are the others? Your friends?"

He shook his head. "Tyler and Cid are convinced I did it. They all are except Malfoy, plus Dumbledore, Snape, and McGonagall. Hopefully Sirius and Remus, too."

"Malfoy?" Neville said incredulously. "He believes you?"

"So he says. He knows about me," he added in a low voice. "Not what I can do, but who I am."

"That's bad," Neville said and Hermione nodded her agreement.

"Is he blackmailing you?"

"No, he's just being friendly. Still. It's why he's doing it. He wants to be pals with the Boy Who Lived. He hasn't told anyone, yet."

"How can you be sure?"

"You know me. I just need to wish hard enough."

* * *

Potions with the Hufflepuffs on Monday afternoon was tense. The two houses didn't get along as it was, save for Alex Stone, but he refused to talk to Harry and he was even cold towards Tyler.

"Sorry," he apologised with only a touch of sincerity, "but he's stealing our glory. You're my best friend and all, Tyler, but I've got to show support for my house."

"Don't see why," Tyler muttered. "When do they ever support you?"

Snape didn't help matters by being particular vicious to the Hufflepuffs that afternoon, docking points for the tiniest mistakes and being scathing to the point of driving Isabelle Walker to tears.

Two days later, McGonagall kept Harry behind after Transfiguration, his last class of the day, and asked him to accompany her to her office. He trudged after her, wondering what misery-inducing thing he had to deal with now, but when he stepped into her office he smiled for the first time in days.

"Sirius!"

"Hey, kid."

"What are you doing here?"

"I'll leave you be," McGonagall said, "but try and keep it quick."

She stepped out, shutting the door behind her. Sirius and Harry sat down, facing each other.

"We got your letter and I wanted to come talk to you face to face. Dumbledore agreed I could come up for a quick visit, given the circumstances."

"You believe I didn't—"

"Course I do," Sirius cut him off. "We both do. This is something your dad and I would have done when we were your age, but you've got more of Lily's sense in you. Have you had any thoughts about who it was?"

Harry shook his head. "I've no idea. It's got to be someone who knows who I am though, doesn't it? Who would bother going to all the trouble for a random third year?"

"I'm afraid you're probably right about that, which doesn't leave a lot of options."

Harry thought about telling him that Malfoy knew, but Harry was certain Malfoy hadn't told anyone and Sirius was distrustful enough of the Malfoys as it was so he decided to keep it quiet.

Sirius warned him against Karkaroff, who he revealed was a Death Eater, and told him to trust Moody. Harry scowled at that.

"You don't like him?" Sirius asked.

"He's a bully."

"Ahh, he's been around the block, kid. He's going to be a tough teacher, but he knows his stuff."

"I don't mean that." He told him about the incident at the start of year, but Sirius only shrugged.

"Sounds like the Malfoy kid deserved it."

"He deserved getting told off and having house points taken, not being bounced around like a basketball."

"Basketball?"

"It's… never mind. Moody's a bully. He abused his power."

"Don't say that. Look, Moody's always had his own way of doing things and maybe he stretches the rules a bit, but he gets things done. He was the best Auror the Ministry had during the war. I know you like to look out for yourself, Harry, but someone out there is trying to kill you. It won't hurt to have Moody watching your back."

Harry said nothing. If he had an eye like Moody's, he could watch his own back. He decided then that he would write to Kirith Karpel that night.

But as much as he didn't like Moody, he realised that Sirius might have a point. He also realised that he was going to have to get through the tournament in front of a large number spectators, which meant he'd have to do it in ways that didn't reveal his Wish magic. He could disguise it as spells, but it had to be spells he could conceivably know.

So, reluctantly, he went to Moody's office the next day after classes and took him up on his offer of extra tutelage.

"Figured you'd be knocking on my door eventually," Moody said and Harry feared he'd turn Harry away, that the offer had been for a limited time only, but he gestured Harry inside. "Have a seat, lets get an idea of just how much you know."

For two hours, Moody drilled him intensely on all manner of defensive magic. They didn't practice any, just talked about it, and by the end Moody was frowning.

"You're not bad, Evans, but you could know more. I want you back here on Saturday morning. We'll turn you into someone that'll win this tournament yet."

Harry nodded. He didn't fancy spending his Saturday morning with Moody, but he'd do what he had to. Besides, it wasn't like he wasn't used to getting taught by someone he didn't like. His grudge against Moody wasn't even personal.

It occurred to him that receiving tutelage from Moody might classify as getting outside help for the tournament, which was strictly against the rules, so he told Cid and Tyler about it while Orion Devaux was in the dorm with them. Word soon got out, but to Harry's disappointment he wasn't summoned to Dumbledore's office and disqualified. Nothing was ever mentioned about it by the teachers, and Harry turned up at Moody's office on Saturday morning feeling disappointed.

It didn't last long. It was hard to hold onto any emotion once Moody started training him. For four long hours Harry practised advanced shielding charms, spells for use against dark creatures, and counter-jinxes and hex deflection. Harry almost had a panic attack when Moody brought out a Boggart for him to practice his Riddikulus spell on, and was embarrassed to reveal that he couldn't do it at all. The Boggart took the form of Crowley, but it was facing Crowley—facing his time in hell—without magic that Harry really feared and the Boggart completely stripped him of the ability to do any magic, wand or Wish.

"Who is he?" Moody asked after forcing the Boggart back into a box.

Harry didn't answer, just stared at his feet, cheeks flushed with humiliation at failing.

"Doesn't matter, I suppose. We'll have to work a way around dealing with it. In the mean time, just hope you don't come across any Boggarts. We'll stop for now, but I want you back next Saturday. I want to test your mettle against a few darker curses."

Harry wasn't sure he liked the sound of that, but he'd learnt a lot that morning. He still didn't like Moody, but he'd put up with him.

Harry got a letter that Thursday from Kirith saying she'd reconsider giving him a magical eye only after having another MRI and extended MEEG, and had booked him for both at the end of December, after Christmas like last time. Harry didn't look forward to another boring few days in hospital, but if he got a magical eye out of it afterwards then it would be worth it.

His good mood from that lasted only until the next afternoon, when his Ancient Runes class was interrupted by Layla Swift coming in to say he had to go to one of the lower classrooms for photographs for the tournament. Harry flushed angrily. It was a mixed class and the Slytherin girls cheered—Harry was the only Slytherin boy taking the class—while the Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors booed. All of Gryffindor were supporting Diggory in the tournament, always preferring to back a Hufflepuff over a Slytherin, but the Ravenclaws were less discriminating. Ed Coleman didn't cheer, but he gave Harry a thumbs up as Harry collected his things and left the classroom.

Layla walked him down to one of the smaller classrooms on the second floor where the desks were pushed aside and the other three champions were already waiting. Bagman was there too, as well as a photographer, and a journalist Bagman introduced as Rita Skeeter.

Skeeter dragged him out the room, ignoring his protests about not wanting to do an interview, and all but manhandled him into a broom cupboard where she sat on an upturned bucket and smiled at him.

"So. The youngest champion. Tell me, Harry, what made you enter the Triwizard Tournament?"

"I didn't."

"Of course not," Rita said dramatically and winked. "Everyone loves a bad boy, Harry."

"I _didn't_. I don't want to be in this stupid tournament."

He wasn't sure she even heard him. "How are you feeling about the upcoming tasks? Nervous? Excited? You're going up against students much older and more experienced than you. It must be nerve-wracking."

"Look, I really didn't—"

"So tell me about yourself, Harry. What do your parents think of you taking part in such a dangerous tournament? And your deformity," she added, gaze lingering on his blind eye, "how did that come about? Birth defect? Tragic accident?" She grabbed his wrist and peered at his medical bracelet. "Complications from your disease?"

"It's not a disease," he snapped, snatching his hand back. "It's a brain disorder, and my parents are dead so they probably don't give a damn."

"Ooh," she cooed with false sympathy. "How _dreadful_. How did they die? How old were you? Were you there; is that how you came about your deformity?"

"I'm not _deformed_!" he yelled, and the quick quotes quill that was scribbling away the entire time burst into flames.

The door opened just as the quill dropped to the floor in a pile of feathery ashes. Dumbledore stood in the doorway with his eyes twinkling and a knowing smile on his face as he saw the destroyed quill and charred parchment.

"If you're quite finished, Ms Skeeter, we'd like to start the wand weighing and we cannot do that when one of our champions is in a broom cupboard."

The wand weighing only involved giving their wands to Mr Ollivander to inspect and check they were in good working order. Harry was glad the others went first; it gave him chance to calm down.

When it was finally Harry's turn, the first thing Ollivander said was, "Ahh, yes, I remember this one."

Harry wondered if he remembered it for the same reason Harry did—because he'd gone through what felt like every wand in stock before finally finding one that worked for him.

"Hmm… well now, that is curious…"

"What is?" Harry said worriedly, and Ollivander glanced at him.

"Magic leaves a mark, Mr Evans. Strong magic can wear down a wand—a poorly made wand in the hands of a wizard it's not suited to might not last a lifetime. Oh, don't worry," he added at Harry's startled look, "I fully expect this to last you a good long lifetime. It's merely curious that it shows evidence of being used much more than one would expect from someone your age. Had I not sold it myself, I might have thought it had been in use much longer than it has been. Nonetheless," he said, flicking it and casting a spell that had champagne shooting out the end, "it's in perfect working condition."

Harry wasn't happy to stand for photographs afterwards. Ollivander's inspection made his already sour mood even worse—not the fact that his magic was wearing his wand down, simply the fact that Ollivander expected it to last him 'a good long lifetime' when Harry knew he wouldn't live anything close to a long lifetime.

Rita Skeeter's article the next morning didn't paint Harry in a good light. She made him out to be some sort of over-emotional kid who entered the tournament in a desperate urge to prove himself despite his health issues, but who clearly had a death wish and an inability to control his magic—which was all the more annoying for being partially true—that was all the result of being unable to deal with the death of his parents. It wasn't half as brutal to the other three champions, on whom it gave only short biographies.

But it was Saturday again and Moody quickly made him forget about the article when, once Harry arrived at his office, he announced, "I want to try putting the Imperius Curse on you, Evans."

Harry's jaw dropped. "What? That's illegal!"

"I've cleared it with Dumbledore.

"I don't care!" Harry cried. "You can't put that on me, and he had no right saying you could."

Moody focused both eyes on him. "I won't force you, Evans, but someone put your name in that Goblet of Fire. If you were any other student, people who aren't me would dismiss it as a prank, but you're not. You're the Boy Who Lived."

Harry inhaled sharply, then felt hot anger follow quickly on the tails of his shock. "Dumbledore told you, he had no right! How—"

"He didn't tell me," Moody interrupted. "He didn't need to. I fought alongside your parents in the war. I knew who you were as soon as I saw you, and the name was a giveaway. I don't know why you took your mother's name and I don't care. I'm not going to tell anyone who you are; secrecy can keep your safe, but not safe enough. Someone out there knows who you are, someone put your name in that cup, someone wants you dead. Could be just one of Voldemort's old followers, or it could be the Dark Lord himself."

He paused, letting Harry absorb that, as if he didn't already know it.

"Now, you've got two options. You can find out what the Imperius Curse feels like now, or you can find out when the Dark Lord or one of his people puts it on you and forces you to kill your friends."

Harry grit his teeth. He didn't want to do this. He didn't want to lose control of himself, especially not to Moody, but he couldn't refute the man's argument.

"Make your choice, Evans."

Extremely reluctantly, Harry agreed. He still tensed when Moody lifted his wand and said firmly, " _Imperio_."

Rather than terrifying him, the curse made him feel surprisingly relaxed and content. It didn't feel like losing control, it felt like relaxing into the command of his subconscious.

'Climb the bookcase,' Moody's voice came in his mind.

He bent his knees, but somewhere in the back of his head a second voice said, _Don't be an idiot._

'Climb the bookcase.'

 _Why would you do that? We don't want to climb the bookcase. There's no point._

'Climb! NOW!'

 _DON'T._

The relaxed happiness twisted under Moody's insistent command and the voice's adamant refusal, and Harry's body tried to obey both at once. As a result, he got halfway up the bookcase and then threw himself off, crashing to the floor. The echoing, empty sensation in his head disappeared and he instead focused on the intense pain in his arm from where his elbow hit the stone floor when he fell.

"You damn near resisted that!" Moody said cheerfully. "You alright? Just a bump, give it a rub and let's go again."

His arm still felt stunned from the blow, but Harry got up and prepared to go under again. He resisted it the second time. That little voice inside his head was more demanding this time, sounding almost angry, as though personally offended at him for not resisting it the first time, and it was far more convincing than Moody's orders.

The next thing he knew, he was in the Hospital Wing. Pomfrey was bent over him and a look of intense relief came over her when she saw him wake up.

"Mr Evans, thank goodness."

He blinked up at her, bleary eyed and feeling a lot rougher than he usually did after a seizure. Beneath the minty flavour of a mouth-freshening charm, he could taste the underlying tang of blood in his mouth. His head throbbed.

"Don't go back to sleep," Pomfrey ordered sternly and Harry realised he'd closed his eyes again. He opened them once more.

"Bad?"

"You knocked your head quite nastily," she confirmed, casting spells over his head that he recognised as checking for concussion. "I don't know what Professor Moody was teaching you, but I've told him it's not to happen again. Can you tell me your name?"

"What?"

"You've got a concussion, I need to check if your memory's alright. Tell me your name."

"Harry Evans."

"Do you know where you are?"

"Hogwarts. Hospital Wing."

"The date?"

"Uh… fourteenth of November?"

She nodded. "And who's the headmaster and your head of house?"

"Dumbledore and Snape."

"Good. I'm going to fetch a couple of potions. Don't go back to sleep. Stay there."

 _Where does she think we're going to go?_

"God knows," Harry muttered, then jerked up. His head spun and he flopped back down again, groaning. He had to shut his eyes against the black and white spots flashing across his vision, and only when the rush of blood to his head passed did he open them again and look around.

No one else was in the Hospital Wing.

He swallowed thickly. He'd heard a voice once before, that time in his first year. That time it had sounded distant and sort of… foreign, and it had said 'me'.

This time it was 'we', and it sounded a lot closer.

 _Well, I would, being inside your head._

Pomfrey came back. She gave Harry a potion for the headache and another that chased off the post-seizure fuzziness, then told him to get some rest.

"I'll check on you in a bit. Do you need anything else?"

He hesitated.

 _Go on,_ the voice whispered snidely. _Tell her you hearing voices and see what happens._

"No," Harry said. "I'm fine."

* * *

He hoped the voice would go away when he was feeling better. It didn't.

 _We should head up to Moody's office,_ it said when Pomfrey released Harry shortly before dinner. _Get a little payback for what he did._

"I agreed to it," Harry muttered, then glanced around. He didn't need anyone seeing him talking to himself.

 _An astonishingly stupid decision, but regardless. He hurt you. You should get revenge._

"It was a seizure, I have them. Please shut up."

 _He caused it, and a bad one at that. You've never had one that bad before. You should make him forget who you are, too. We can't trust him._

Harry grit his teeth and said nothing. He didn't want to agree with a voice in his head. Moody hadn't told anyone so far, and Sirius had said to trust him, and Moody had known his parents. Even if Harry made him forget, he'd only figure it out again.

As he walked down to Slytherin, he noticed a few students sporting yellow armbands with DIGGORY FOR CHAMPION stamped across them in black letters. A few people who weren't wearing them instead had green badges pinned to their chest with bright silver letters proclaiming HARRY EVANS: SALAZAR'S CHAMPION.

As if he didn't have enough to put up with.

 _He could have been the one that put your name in the Goblet, you know,_ the voice said as Harry reached the marble staircase. _Why haven't you done anything about it yet?_

There were people in the Entrance Hall below, so he didn't answer it. What could he do, anyway? He had to compete, that had already been decided for him.

 _You could just not turn up to the tasks, or turn up and not do anything, settle with a zero score, but that would be a waste of your powers. You can win this if you wanted to. But that wasn't what I was talking about. Why haven't you simply Wished for whoever put your name into the Goblet to confess?_

Harry stopped at the foot of the stairs. It was so simple, so obvious, that he could kick himself. He'd been so caught up in his misery and irritation over the whole thing that he hadn't even thought of it.

"Move it, cheat," an Irish voice said behind him before someone bashed his shoulder. Harry scowled as Seamus Finnigan went by with Dean Thomas and Ron Weasley, all three of them wearing the DIGGORY FOR CHAMPION armbands.

"Hey, Evans!"

Harry sighed, looking towards the entrance of the dungeons even as he moved towards the Great Hall. Malfoy lengthened his stride, leaving his friends to catch Harry just before the door, grabbing his arm and spinning him away.

"What are you doing, Malfoy?" Harry asked, yanking himself free.

Malfoy grinned at him, reaching into his pocket and pulling out one of the green badges. "I wanted to show you these. Those Hufflepuff twats have made armbands supporting Diggory—really ugly ones, I might add—so I made sure we had something to support you."

 _He's a bit pathetic, isn't he?_

"You think it's a good idea to remind people that I've got any connection to Salazar Slytherin?" Harry asked.

Malfoy frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean two years ago I got possessed, petrified three people and a ghost, and killed someone. I don't need people reminded of that."

"Don't be ridiculous, that wasn't your fault, everyone knows that."

"The Hufflepuffs don't believe that."

"Hufflepuffs are idiots. Don't worry about it, Evans. We've all got your back," Malfoy said, pressing the badge into Harry's hand and then heading into the hall after his friends.

Harry vanished the badge and headed inside as well, thinking of how best to deal with whoever put his name in the Goblet of Fire. The hall wasn't yet packed, it still early enough that only the particularly hungry or those with nothing better to do had arrived. A few teachers were at the staff table, including Dumbledore, who wasn't yet eating but chatting with Professor Vector. At the Slytherin table, Harry found Cid already piling his plate with steak-and-kidney pie.

"Hey," Cid greeted as Harry sat opposite him, back to the wall so he could see the rest of the hall spread out before him. "Haven't seen you all day. Moody been working you that hard?"

"Had a seizure," Harry said, reaching for a dish of pasta. "Where's Tyler?"

"Said he was going to practice Divination with Lara Raines, but I don't need to read tea leaves to know they've probably just been snogging all after afternoon."

"That sounds boring."

"That's why I said they're making out."

"That's what I meant," Harry clarified.

Cid lowered his knife and fork, shooting him an incredulous look. "Snogging isn't boring, which you'd know if you'd actually done it."

Harry wasn't so sure, but all he said was, "But all afternoon? Doesn't your mouth get sore, kissing for that long?"

Cid took a thoughtful bite of his pie. "Maybe," he said after swallowing. "Never thought about it. Ask Tyler when he gets here."

Shaking his head, Harry added bolognese to his pasta and dug in. He didn't actually care to know, but Cid did ask as soon as Tyler turned up and joined them, when the hall was getting busy.

"Yes, your mouth does get tired," Tyler said, then grinned and added, "but that's why you do other things."

Not interested in what those other things might be, Harry decided it was time. The Great Hall was as crowded as it would get—meal times were a bit more lax and drawn out on weekends—and almost all the teachers were there, so he made his Wish. He ran his gaze over the hall, watching suspiciously for anyone who stood up when he made the Wish.

"I put Harry Evans' name in the Goblet of Fire."

The noise died down, everyone turning to look at the staff table. Harry's jaw dropped. Moody stood up from his chair, now looking as surprised as the rest of the hall by what he'd just said.

"Alastor?" Dumbledore said.

"I put Harry Evans' name in the Goblet of Fire," Moody repeated. Half the students looked around at Harry, but Harry's gaze never left Moody.

Dumbledore, calm as anything, asked simply, "Why?"

"Because my lord told me to."

That baffled Harry, but Moody sat close enough to Dumbledore for Harry to notice the shock and anger that flashed over the headmaster's face before it returned to its usual calm. Two seats down Moody's other side, Snape had gone pale.

Dumbledore stood up. "I think we should take this to my office, Alastor. Mr Evans," he called, "would you join us, please."

Harry nodded, standing, trying to wrap his head around this development. He didn't trust Moody, or even like him very much, but he hadn't thought he'd be the one responsible for this. And who was his 'lord'?

 _There's only one lord we know._

Harry bit his lip, resisting the urge to tell the voice there was no 'we'. It had a point though. Was Moody working for Voldemort?

Moody clomped down the hall, Dumbledore close behind. Moody was frowning, looking confused, but when he passed Harry, anger and hatred flickered across his scarred features. Harry fell in behind the two men, the growing sound of fresh gossip following him out the hall.

The Entrance Hall was almost empty, only a few students hanging about. When the three of them were halfway towards the marble staircase, Moody suddenly spun around, wand out and a spell already making the tip glow blue. Harry leapt back, but Dumbledore seemed to have been expecting it, because he had his own wand up in a flash and they was a crack and a burst of sparks as Moody's spell hit Dumbledore's shield.

"Get into the hall!" Dumbledore called to the other students, who were already running for it. Moody had already released two more spells in quick succession, moving as he cast, clearly hoping to reach the large double doors even as Dumbledore deflected his curses.

 _He doesn't seriously expect to run from us, does he? With that leg?_

Harry didn't know, but he didn't care to find out. As soon as the other students disappeared into the hall, he Wished for Moody's wand, felt it appear right in his hand. Moody was attempting to cast at the same moment and looked rather stupid twirling his empty hand in a circle.

Moody took a step towards the doors, but that was enough for him to realise he had no hope of escaping them—or the teachers that were now coming out the Great Hall, no doubt drawn by the noise and the frightened students who'd gone running in. Snape and McGonagall came to stand by Dumbledore, while Sprout remained in the doorway, keeping back the curious students who wanted to see what was going on.

"Albus?" McGonagall said, wand in hand but down by her side. "Is everything alright?"

"Yes, thank you, Minerva. Shall we continue, Alastor?" Dumbledore said, gesturing to the stairs. Moody's bright blue eye roved over the three teachers, Harry, the students peering past Professor Sprout, and nodded, turning towards the marble staircase.

"Shall I accompany you, headmaster?" Snape asked.

Dumbledore nodded. "And you, Minerva, if you wouldn't mind."

"Of course, Albus."

As they all ascended, Harry heard the students begin to be released from the Great Hall, the excited whispers as people crowded the Entrance Hall, watching the group ascending the stairs.

At the top, they turned in the direction of Dumbledore's office, when suddenly Moody lunged towards the stairs again. Snape grabbed Harry by the shoulders, pulling him away, but Moody made no move for Harry.

"The Dark Lord will rise again!" he cried, and threw himself down the stairs. His action surprised them so much no one reacted in time to stop his fall. Several students screamed, skittering backwards from the foot of the stairs, and Moody landed on the stone tiles with a loud crack.

Dumbledore and McGonagall rushed down, Dumbledore crouching by the fallen man and McGonagall giving a startled cry. Moving down the staircase a little, Harry could see why: Moody's head lay at angle that meant his neck had to be broken, but his body was still twitching, and his face was bubbling and morphing oddly. His electric blue eye popped out and his fake leg came free with a small snap and was pushed out the bottom of his robe by a real one.

"Polyjuice!" Snape murmured, moving past Harry. Harry followed, stopping a few steps up from the bottom, letting him see that 'Moody' was now a pale and fair-haired man about Snape's age.

"Who is that?" Harry asked.

"That," Dumbledore said gravely, "is Barty Crouch Junior."

"But he's in Azkaban!" McGonagall said.

"Evidently not. Minerva, will you take him to the hospital wing, please. Severus, escort Harry to my office and wait for me there." Dumbledore then rose, turning to face everyone crowding the hall as McGonagall conjured a stretcher beneath Moody and a sheet over him. "Students, please return to your common rooms and stay there for the rest of the evening."

"Come along," Snape said quietly to Harry, ushering him up the stairs after McGonagall, who floated the stretcher alongside her. They stayed together until the Hospital Wing, where McGonagall turned in and Snape and Harry carried on.

When they reached Dumbledore's office, Snape immediately turned on Harry and demanded, "What did you do?"

"I didn't kill him!"

"I don't think _that_ , but you did something."

"I only Wished for whoever put my name in the Goblet to confess, I didn't think he'd kill himself," Harry said miserably. He didn't like that he might be responsible for yet another death, however indirect.

 _Don't feel bad. He put you under an Unforgivable Curse._

'And created you,' Harry thought, biting his lip to keep from speaking aloud in front of Snape.

Snape sighed, turning away to begin pacing the office. "I can hardly fault you for that, and you couldn't have known what he'd do. Don't blame yourself. Crouch made his own decision."

"Why kill himself?"

"I expect he preferred to die than return to Azkaban. I can't blame him."

"What was he in for?"

"He was convicted of torturing and killing two Aurors shortly after the Dark Lord fell. His own father sentenced him to life in prison."

"His own _father_?"

Snape glanced briefly at him and then away again. "Parents will do terrible things to their children, sometimes without realising the true harm they're doing."

Harry looked at him sceptically. "You're telling me Mr Crouch didn't know he was sending his son to live with Dementors for the rest of his life?"

Snape scowled. "I am saying you cannot understand the actions of another without knowing their reasons. What Crouch's son did was terrible; the Aurors he and other Death Eaters tortured are irreparably damaged. Crouch had no other choice but to send his son to Azkaban."

"Do you think my dad would have sent me to Azkaban?" He wasn't sure why he asked it.

Snape gave him a sharp look. "I trust you'd never do anything to warrant it."

"But if I did. You knew my dad. Would he have sent me there?"

Snape stopped pacing, standing by the window and looking out, his back to Harry. "I hated James Potter and will always believe the worst of him," he said stiffly, then his voice softened just barely noticeably, "but your mother would never have let it happen, no matter what you did."

That, Harry thought, was enough for him.

* * *

When Dumbledore finally arrived, it was with Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge, and Barty Crouch Senior. Crouch was pale and downtrodden, his hair a mess, eyes red-rimmed. Fudge looked shaken, turning his bowler hat nervously in his hands.

"What are they doing here?" Fudge asked Dumbledore with a gesture at Snape and Harry.

Crouch collapsed into a chair without invitation, and buried his face in his hands. Dumbledore moved around his desk, conjured a few more chairs so there was enough for everyone, and had them all sit.

"Well?" Fudge demanded. "Why is this student here?"

"That student is Harry Evans," Dumbledore said, "as I'm sure you know. He is here because Barty Crouch the younger confessed to putting Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire shortly before his death."

Crouch Senior made a small, whimpering noise.

"Very well," Fudge said, somewhat begrudgingly, Harry thought, but he gave Crouch a vaguely sympathetic look. "Pull yourself together, Barty, and explain things."

It took Crouch a few moments, taking several steadying breaths before he lowered his hands. There were fresh tear tracks on his face, but he didn't wipe them away, eyes remaining fixed on the floor. He wrapped his hands around himself and clutched his arms, and spoke with a quiet, downcast voice.

"It was Calanthe's idea. It was her final request, I could not deny her."

Harry frowned and opened his mouth to ask who Calanthe was, but Snape touched his arm, and mouthed, 'His wife.'

"I knew the Dementors couldn't distinguish individuals and Calanthe was dying, as was her son. He was too weak to survive their proximity. I used my connections to arrange a private visit and purchased Polyjuice Potion. Calanthe and the boy drank and exchanged places, and I snuck him out beside me. Calanthe—" Crouch took a shuddering breath and new tears spilled down his cheeks "—Calanthe spent her last days in Azkaban, drinking the Polyjuice until she died."

He sobbed then, just once. Fudge was staring at him in horror; Dumbledore's expression was more pitying; Harry couldn't read Snape's just then. Harry himself felt only disdain for Crouch, even in the face of his anguish. He hadn't missed the way Crouch said 'her son' and 'the boy', distancing himself from his own child.

Crouch continued. "I faked Calanthe's death at home and had an empty grave made for her. I kept the boy at home, under control. I hid him under an invisibility cloak and kept him bespelled, and charged Winky to watch over him day and night."

"What spells did you use on him?" Dumbledore asked. He spoke gently, but Crouch's face still twisted with self-rebuke and he clutched his hands so tightly around his arms that his knuckles went white.

"The Imperius Curse. I had no choice, I knew I couldn't let him go free!"

"But he broke it," Dumbledore said, less gently this time.

Crouch began to rock slightly. "I think—I'm not sure—that he's been gaining his will with time. I can't be sure when he truly broke free, but he was this summer, at the Quidditch Cup—"

"It was him!" Fudge gasped. "He cast the Dark Mark?"

"You let him attend it?" Snape asked sharply.

Crouch nodded miserably. "Winky convinced me. She said Calanthe would not have wanted the boy to be shut up for the rest of his life. I knew she was right, and I thought I had him under control. But when the elf was found with the Weasley boy's wand, I knew what had happened. I found the boy unconscious in the bushes, Stunned by those of us who went to the site when the Mark appeared. I found him still under the invisibility cloak I made him wear and once the others left, I put him back under the Curse and took him home. I had to stay with him; I dismissed the elf. She let him get a wand, she almost let him escape."

"But he escaped you somehow," Snape said. "How did he end up impersonating Mad-Eye Moody?"

Crouch's head jerked up finally, but he looked at Dumbledore rather than Snape, and his guilt and anguish faded under urgency. "It was _him_ , Dumbledore. He turned up at my house, he'd learnt from Bertha Jorkins about the boy, and he—"

"Bertha knew about this?" Fudge interrupted.

"Yes, yes, she came around one day with papers," Crouch explained hastily. "I wasn't home at the time, my elf admitted her, but Bertha snooped and saw the boy with Winky. I erased her memory, but I overdid the charm. It permanently damaged her memory."

Fudge looked stricken. Harry felt suddenly glad that he'd not damaged Tyler, Draco, or his classmates' memories with his own memory charms over the years, and hoped he hadn't harmed those Muggles in Bath this summer.

"But when she holidayed to Albania this summer, You Know Who discovered her," Crouch went on, and the atmosphere in the room turned thick. Snape stiffened in his chair and Fudge went white.

"Barty, what are you saying? He's dead!"

Crouch shook his head. "He's not, Cornelius. He's weak. He has just a homunculus for a body, but he's not dead, and he has a servant. That Peter Pettigrew."

"Nonsense!"

"Cornelius, please," Dumbledore said. "Let him speak. You say Lord Voldemort came to your house, Barty?"

"Just days after the World Cup. Pettigrew brought him. They put me under the Imperius and freed the boy. You Know Who has a plan."

"Wait," Snape interrupted. "You're under the Imperius?"

Crouch gave a negative twitch of the head. "I was. The moment I saw the boy…" He trailed off, swallowed, and finally said, "My son. When I saw my son, dead, it—it snapped. The fog has lifted. My mind is my own again."

Snape shot Dumbledore a doubtful look.

"Barty, would you mind if we checked you, to be sure?"

"You do it."

"As you wish." Dumbledore drew his wand and aimed it across the desk at Crouch. He spoke no spell, gave only a slight little flick, and nothing happened. He tucked the wand away again. "He is free. Please go on."

"He knew about the Triwizard Tournament, and Moody's appointment as Defence teacher. He knew that the boy was a loyal servant still. He had the boy attack Moody at home and assume his position at Hogwarts, so he could force Harry Evans into the Triwizard Tournament. He was to guide Evans through the task, helping if needed, and they planned to turn the Triwizard Cup into a Portkey for the final task. It would send him to You Know Who so his blood can be used in a ritual to resurrect him to full power."

Harry recoiled, horrified. It was bad enough thinking someone wanted him to get himself killed facing the tasks; this was much worse.

Fudge looked baffled. "Why this boy?"

Everyone looked at Harry. Harry looked at Dumbledore. "Do I have to?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Have to what?" Fudge demanded. "What is going on here?"

"I am going to ask your complete secrecy on this, Cornelius," Dumbledore said as Harry drew his wand.

"On—good god!" Fudge exclaimed, staring at Harry as he touched his wand to his forehead and pretended to remove a Concealing Charm. "Harry Potter!"

"Evans," Harry corrected, stowing his wand again.

"But you're the Boy Who Lived!"

"Yes, and I use my mother's surname."

Fudge blinked at him, then turned on Dumbledore. "You've been hiding him here all this time? I should have known!"

"It was Harry's wish not to have his presence made public," Dumbledore replied calmly. "I respected that."

"Not made public? Why not? The people deserve to know—"

"No, they don't," Harry interrupted angrily. "Why do they need to know anything? I'm just a kid trying to do his schooling, I'm not anything special."

"Not special?" Fudge repeated incredulously. "You defeated You Know Who."

"Not very well, it seems. Anyway, look what happened when hardly anyone knew! If it was public knowledge, people would probably be trying to kill me left, right, and centre."

"Preposterous," Fudge spluttered. "National hero—no one would—this is all just—"

"He's still out there," Crouch interrupted. His tone was harder now, and his gaze fixed steadily on Fudge. "You Know Who isn't as dead as we thought, Cornelius. It would be a fool's errand to pretend he was. Even in the homunculus he grows more powerful every day. He feeds on a concoction of snake venom and some restorative draught. Pettigrew attends him. They have taken over my home."

"You've gone mad, man," Fudge said.

Crouch's eyes flashed. His hands dropped from his arms and he straightened his back, looking a little more like the man Harry saw the night the champions were picked.

"I have been a fool, no doubt, and I am stricken with regret, but don't take that to mean my mind is any less than it was. Send Aurors to my home immediately—a team of them—and you'll soon see the truth of what I say."

"They may find nothing," Dumbledore said. "Voldemort may have felt the Imperius Curse break—I have heard that caster's can feel it if a victim snaps free of their own will. He would realise that something has gone wrong and fled to safer venues."

"Albus, you can't believe this!" Fudge objected.

"Why not? We have enough of his story, Cornelius. Harry was tricked into the Triwizard Tournament, we discovered Alastor Moody inside his own trunk, and I have heard rumours that Voldemort was last seen in Albania."

"Now hold on!" Fudge said almost angrily, gesturing at Harry. "You've been hiding the Boy Who Lived here, unbeknownst to anyone, so how could You Know Who have known to put him in this tournament?"

He looked smug, as if this was irrefutable proof of Voldemort's non-existence.

Crouch's brow furrowed. "He acted as if he'd met you, Evans—recently, that is—but I also think he learnt something of you from Pettigrew. But it was strange. Pettigrew would talk about you as if you were any other student, but if he began to allude to you being the Boy Who Lived then suddenly he would fall silent, as if bespelled."

Harry recalled the Wish he put on Pettigrew months ago in this very office. He couldn't recall it exactly, but he thought it had only stopped Pettigrew revealing his identity and power. Apparently he should have stopped him talking about Harry at all.

 _Or killed him when you had the chance,_ the voice muttered viciously.

"Well, that's rubbish, isn't it?" Fudge said. "Evans here hasn't faced You Know Who since he was a babe."

Dumbledore shifted. "Actually, Harry faced Lord Voldemort little more than two years ago, when he was possessing Professor Quirrell and attempting to steal the Philosopher's Stone. We can thank Harry that he failed, but I suspect that, between that and slivers of information from Peter Pettigrew, it was enough for Voldemort to figure things out."

"This is outrageous. You Know Who's dead!" Fudge sounded almost hysterically desperate.

In response, Dumbledore was firmly commanding. "He isn't, Cornelius. He never died, merely lost his power and his body. He has been seeking a new one for thirteen years, with aid from whomever he could find."

"Send Aurors to my home," Crouch said again. "Even if he and Pettigrew have fled, you might find evidence of them. Then you can arrest me."

"Arrest you?" Fudge said blankly.

"I used an Unforgivable Curse on another human. That is an automatic life-sentence in Azkaban." Crouch sounded remarkably calm about the prospect.

Snape stood up, apparently deciding he'd heard enough. "Shall I take Evans down to Slytherin, headmaster?"

"Yes, I think he's heard all he needs to."

Harry stood, but didn't turn away. "What about the tournament? You all know I didn't put my name in the Goblet now."

The adults all exchanged looks. Eventually Crouch said apologetically, "Even so, the fact remains. The Goblet constitutes a binding magical contract. You must compete."

"You've nothing to fear now but the tasks themselves," Dumbledore said with a smile.

"Oh," Harry muttered, turning to follow Snape out. "Is that all?"

* * *

Everyone demanded an explanation for everything when Harry returned to Slytherin, but Snape told them all to leave him alone and that the headmaster would explain everything in the morning. He also mentioned that a therapist was coming into the school for students to talk to, with priority given to anyone who'd seen Crouch's suicide.

Harry gratefully retreated to his dorm, pulling the curtains closed around his bed. He wrote to Sirius and Remus, explaining what happened, and Wished the letter home, then he dug out a book and spent much of the night reading, not settling down to sleep until his body was too tired and his brain too overloaded with history for him to worry about plots against him.

As such, he slept late the next morning. His roommates were all gone when he woke and the bathroom was nice and empty so he took a leisurely shower before heading up to the Great Hall.

But he stopped short just inside the door because every head in the room turned to look at him and silence fell. At the staff table, Snape got to his feet and started hurrying towards him, but Malfoy reached Harry first.

"It wasn't me," he said in a murmur. "I swear to you."

"What wasn't?"

Malfoy held out a folded up newspaper, but before Harry could take it Snape was on them, snatching it away. He grabbed Harry's arm and turned him around, marching him out the hall without a word.

"Sir, what's—"

"In here," he said, roughly guiding Harry into an empty classroom and shutting the door behind him.

"Sir?"

"You're not going to like what you're about to read," Snape said, "which is why I don't want you seeing it in the hall where there are plenty of people that could be harmed."

"What's going on?" he asked, panic bubbling in his chest now. Snape handed him the paper and Harry snatched it from him, unfolding it and staring at the front page, which was completely covered by six words.

 _HARRY EVANS: THE BOY WHO LIVED_


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

The windows of the classroom shattered. In the hallway, three suits of armour blew apart, sending helmets, legs, and arms flying across the hall. The paper burst into flames.

"Fudge," Harry growled. "I'll kill him."

"You will not kill him," Snape told him sternly. "I'll not have you become a murderer, and you don't know for certain he is responsible."

Harry made an irritable noise and the shattered remains of the glass skittered across the floor. "Who else would it be? He found out yesterday and now it's all over the news."

 _Nice little distraction from the embarrassment of the arrest of a highly placed Ministry employee,_ said the voice in his head.

"Exactly," Harry said, then at Snape's furrowed brow he hurried to add, "Did it even mention everything that happened with Crouch?"

"Yes, but not in detail and that's why I believe it wasn't Fudge. He was likely dealing with that most of yesterday evening; the details of it will likely be published in tomorrows paper. The _Sunday Prophet_ , however, has always been thicker than the daily edition, and today's included a lengthy biographical piece on you. It was too long to have been written and published in the space of a night, especially as it included things that couldn't possibly have come from Fudge."

Harry looked up sharply. "What things?"

"Private medical issues, including how you came about your blindness and epilepsy. _Exactly_ how."

Harry went pale. "They know about my uncle?"

Snape nodded, and Harry felt a burst of angry shame. He'd admitted the abuse to some people, but for everyone to find out that he used to get beaten by his own family…

"Fudge also would have insisted on a highly positive article, I would imagine. That one," Snape said, gesturing at that charred remains of the paper, "treated you as someone to be pitied rather than as a child hero."

"Great," Harry muttered, but he wasn't sure getting worshipped was any better than being pitied. "How'd they even find out about all that?"

"I think you'll find that Skeeter talked to someone who works at Saint Mungo's."

"Not Kirith!" That would be the cherry on the cake of disaster if she'd betrayed him.

"I don't believe so," Snape said, to Harry's relief. "I suspect it was Andrew Hopkins."

"Who?"

"He was the second specialist called in when the magic restraints nearly killed you. He was sworn to secrecy, but apparently he didn't put any more honour in that than in his healer's oath."

"Bastard," Harry swore. "I'm getting him fired. Wait—" A horrifying thought suddenly occurred to him. "Did he tell them about my magic?"

"No," Snape said, and Harry sagged with relief. "Which is curious given how free he was with the rest of your issues. However, you need not take any magical revenge against him. Assuming it is him, he's broken confidentiality and you can get him arrested. Write to Black. As your guardian, he can take the necessary steps to having Hopkins dealt with."

Harry grimaced. "Damn. I never told Sirius about my uncle." He looked down at the ashes of the newspaper. "I could just memory charm the whole country and burn all the newspapers."

"Please don't," Snape said hurriedly. "You've no idea the consequences such an action could have, nor whether it would actually be effective. The news is out; deal with it. You cannot keep running away from your problems."

Harry sighed. "I guess."

They left the classroom. Someone had repaired the suits of armour in the hall, where Harry was surprised to find Hermione, Neville, Cid, and Tyler waiting for him. Snape swept past them with a scowl.

"Are you okay?" Neville asked. Harry nodded.

Hermione held out a pile of toast. "You didn't get to eat and I thought you wouldn't want to go back to the hall now."

He took it gratefully. "You're the best, Hermione."

"It's true then?" Tyler demanded. "You're the Boy Who Lived?"

"Yes," Harry muttered.

"Fuck," Cid said. "Can't believe you never told us. Where's the scar?"

Harry drew his wand and touched it to his forehead under the pretence of casting a revealing spell, and the scar came into view. Tyler and Cid stared. Harry scowled.

"Stop that," he snapped. "It's going to be bad enough from the rest of the school, I don't need you two doing it as well."

"You're the _Boy Who Lived_ ," Tyler said. " _The_ Harry Potter, you're—"

"Evans," Harry said sharply. "My name is Evans."

"How come?" Cid asked. "All the books and stories say Potter, and your parents were married, weren't they?"

"Yes, but I changed it when I went into hiding."

"Hiding? What are you talking about?"

"It didn't mention that you'd run away," Hermione told Harry, who resisted the urge to smack himself in the face.

Tyler looked between Hermione and Neville. "You guys knew, didn't you?"

They nodded. Tyler looked at Harry.

"You spend less time with them than with us, but you trust them more?"

"It's not like that," Harry muttered, feeling guilty for the slightly betrayed expression on Tyler's face. He sighed. "Look, I'll tell you everything, but not here."

"Back to Slytherin?"

Harry shook his head. "Too busy. I know a room on the seventh floor that's private."

It took them a while to reach the seventh floor; people kept stopping him to ask if the news was really true and demanding to see the scar. He was annoyed when he saw Ginny Weasley and she just squeaked, flushed, and hurried away without saying anything, but more annoyed when Justin Finch-Fletchley and Ernie Macmillan stormed up to him and loudly pronounced him a liar.

"This is just more attention grabbing," Justin said, jabbing a finger into Harry's chest. "The Boy Who Lived is a wonderful wizard, not the heir of Slytherin."

"He's _not_ the heir of Slytherin," Tyler spoke up before Harry could. "He was possessed, Finch-Fletchley. He never meant to attack us."

"That's what he wants you to think," Ernie said, glaring at Harry. "He's tricked you into thinking that, and now he's trying to trick everyone into believing he's the Boy Who Lived when he's not."

Harry shook his head disgustedly and stalked past them without another word. There was no point arguing with them; they'd already made up their minds about him.

When they reached the seventh floor, Harry made the Room of Requirement into a sitting room for them all to relax in, and had to explain the room to them all before Cid and Tyler ordered him to tell them everything he'd kept from them. He told them how he'd run away from home, spent years on the streets, stumbled upon Diagon Alley, and then found his way to Hogwarts and spent a year hiding out until Dumbledore found him and said he could join properly, but he didn't tell them about his magic. Hermione gave him a small, disapproving frown, but she didn't mention it either.

Harry would have gladly spent all day in that room, but his friends wouldn't stay with him and he knew he'd have to face the rest of the school eventually. He put up with the staring and questions all through lunch, then spent the afternoon hiding in his dorm.

He didn't Wish for whoever outed him to reveal themself. Every time he thought of it, he remembered the sight of Crouch's body crumpled at the bottom of the stairs. He didn't want to cause anything like that again, so he would leave it to Sirius to investigate Andrew Hopkins. If it turned out it wasn't him, then Harry would do things the magical way.

The next morning, he was inundated with owls at breakfast. He had to get Cid and Tyler to help him untie all the letters and when he opened them it was to find a multitude of sympathies from strangers, offers to attack his uncle in vengeance of what happened to him, offers to pay for private medical care, thanks for defeating Voldemort, and good luck wishes for the tournament.

He got a short message from Kirith assuring him that she wasn't the one to out him, and mentioning that Andrew Hopkins had been accused of breaking confidentiality before, which pretty much confirmed that it was him.

He also got a letter from Sirius, but before he could open it, Dumbledore called down, "Mr Evans, could you come up here please."

He looked up to see that Dumbledore was surrounded with almost as many owls as himself. He got up and went to the staff table where Dumbledore handed him an envelope.

"These are all for you."

Harry looked at the envelope, frowning, but written on the front was _Harry Potter, Hogwarts_.

"Why did they come to you?" he asked Dumbledore.

"Names have power, Mr Evans. You haven't just been using a false name, you changed it right down to your soul. These owls knew they had to come to Hogwarts, but they couldn't find anyone called Harry Potter, so they delivered the letters to the head of the school."

He took all the letters back to Slytherin and dumped the ones addressed to Harry Potter in the fireplace. If they couldn't be bothered to get his name right, he couldn't be bothered to read them.

He had just enough time before classes to read the one from Sirius, opening it warily, but relaxing once he read it. There was no pity, just anger at Vernon Dursley, and he didn't ask why Harry hadn't told him about it before. It sounded like Remus had spoken to him and the letter was understanding that Harry didn't have to tell Sirius everything, albeit with a slight undertone of resentment. Harry ignored that, just thankful that Sirius hadn't disowned him.

* * *

 _Lucius—_

 _10pm, the base of the mountain over Hogsmeade. Meet me there or the whole world finds out about that man in your cellar._

Lucius burned the letter as soon as it came, tossing it into the breakfast room fireplace and guiding it with his wand to ensure every last millimetre burned.

"What was that?" Narcissa asked, setting her own mail down beside her empty plate.

"Junk mail," he lied, and when she gave the fireplace a curious look, he added, "Advertising virility potions."

Narcissa laughed. "Offended your pride, did they? Never mind, dear, I'm sure you won't need them for another fifty years at least."

"So long as I have you, I'll never need them."

She smiled, pleased, and picked up her tea cup. "Draco sends his love, by the way."

"Anything else of note?"

"Not as such. The real Moody has begun teaching classes, but they're not very much different to Crouch's, and Pansy Parkinson got burned during a Magical Creatures lesson."

Lucius muttered something vaguely sympathetic and reached for his own cup of tea.

"Oh," Narcissa added offhandedly as he took as sip, "and Draco says we're not to engage in anything carnal ever again."

Lucius choked on his tea, spilling it down his chin and onto his robes in the most undignified manner. "Narcissa!"

She was too busy laughing at him to reply. Scowling, he dried his robes with a tap of his wand, though it left them still smelling of tea.

"That was a bit immature," he said. Narcissa merely smiled at him. "What was that about?"

She answered this time, still smiling. "The Greengrass girl read his stars for him, apparently, and predicted a change in the family dynamics and the birth of something new. Draco made it very clear that he doesn't want a younger sibling."

Lucius scoffed. "As if some chit of a girl knows anything about reading the stars."

"They do say there's seer blood in her mother's family."

"Baseless gossip," Lucius dismissed.

"Perhaps." She stood, giving him a wicked smile. "Shall we test it?"

He rose as well, moving around the table. "I do need to change my robes, and I would certainly enjoy proving Gerald's daughter a fraud."

Laughing, she took his hand and pulled him close.

That night, Lucius told Narcissa he was going to see a friend, and Apparated to Hogsmeade. He considered taking the man in the cellar with him, for backup, but given that the meeting was about him it seemed risky. At least the cellar had precautious for if Lucius was caught.

He appeared in one of Hogsmeade's darker side streets, hood pulled up and wand in hand, and shivered. Winter was already closing over northern Scotland while Wiltshire was still clinging to autumn.

Avoiding the main road, he dirtied his boots skirting the edge of the village as he moved south, but in the end his caution was pointless. There was no one at the foot of the mountain when he reached it. He even cast a few spells to detect hidden persons, but if there were any, they could hide from all the spells he knew.

He looked around, searching for a message or some other sign of the person who'd written him, and was just wondering if the whole thing was a joke when he heard skittering movement. He spun, wand aimed, but it was just a rat.

A rat that suddenly grew and became a squat, simpering man. Lucius recognised him only after he'd whipped his wand back up, point fixed firmly on the space between the man's beady eyes. Peter Pettigrew.

"Hey! I thought you were going to help!"

"Help?" Lucius repeated, stepping forwards as the man cowered back. "Why would I help someone who blackmails me, Pettigrew? How did you even find out about him?"

Pettigrew wrung his hands. "About who? Blackmail? I didn't blackmail you. What would I blackmail you with?"

Lucius stopped, looking over the pathetic little man, considering what he'd said. "Why did you think I would help you?"

"Probably because I sent him a letter saying he would find someone to help him right here, at this time," said a new voice. Lucius and Pettigrew looked up to see a third man flying down to join them, not astride a broom but levitating himself expertly to the ground. Lucius had heard of people mastering the skill of flying, but he'd never actually seen it.

"Who are you?" Lucius demanded, moving his wand from Pettigrew to the newcomer. He had fluffy blond hair—a far more yellow shade than Lucius himself—and wore a green cloak etched with darker green runes, but there was otherwise nothing remarkable about his appearance. He held no wand and Lucius caught no sight of a holster when the man lifted a hand to tap two fingers to his head in a salute.

"I'm the Assistant, nice to meet you. And you again, Pete. How's things?"

"You know him?" Lucius asked Pettigrew.

"No."

"We've never formally met," the Assistant said, "but I helped Pete there escape going to Azkaban some months back. I'm nice like that. And now I want to help you both."

"I don't help people who try to blackmail me," Lucius said.

The Assistant smiled. "Well that's the fun thing about blackmail, Luci. You help me or I tell your dirty little secret."

"Don't call me that," Lucius snapped, then: "How do you know about him?"

"I know a lot of things. For instance, I know that Pete here is working for our dear Dark Lord once again."

Lucius gaped. "Our _what_?"

The Assistant scratched his chin. "Yeah, maybe don't mention I called him that. Wouldn't take kindly to it. Look, point is, Peter here is trying to restore the Dark Lord to a new body, but with Crouch Junior dead and his father arrested, the plan's a bit buggered. I therefore took it upon myself to engineer this little meeting so you, Lucius, can step up and help out."

"You expect us to believe _you_ want to help the Dark Lord?" Lucius asked, looking the man over with a sneer. He hadn't lowered his wand yet, and he almost hexed the man when he thrust out his left arm suddenly, yanked his sleeve up, and revealed the Dark Mark on his arm.

"Proof enough?"

Pettigrew gasped. "It's so clear."

He was right. The mark on the Assistant's arm was much clearer than the one on Lucius', the skull and snake a vivid red on his untanned skin.

"It's fake," Lucius said. "This is some pathetic attempt at capturing me for things I did in the war, but I'd remind you I was dismissed of all charges. I was under the Imperius Curse."

He stepped back, intending to leave, but stopped when the Assistant asked, "Did you put him under the Animancupium?"

"What's that?" Pettigrew asked, looking between them. Neither Lucius or the Assistant looked at him.

"Or did you just keep him as a pet, Luci?"

Lucius tried to wet his suddenly dry mouth. "How do you know about him?"

"I told you, I know a lot of things. I know, for instance, that if you walk away from this, then I'll release the information I have and you'll be in Azkaban for the rest of your life. You hope, anyway, because if you walk away then Pete here will go back to the Dark Lord and report on your refusal to aid him, and when the Dark Lord gets his body back, you'll be right there on the list of people he plans to kill for betraying him."

He was right, damn him.

Still…

"If you're so keen to see the Dark Lord risen again, why not help him yourself?"

The Assistant shrugged. "Because I've been ordered to remain here until I'm summoned, but I can't be summoned if the Dark Lord has no body, can I? So you two get on with resurrecting him, and I'll make sure your dirty secrets remain secret."

* * *

With the truth out, support for Harry increased. Less people seemed angry at him now they all knew he hadn't entered himself in the tournament, and he saw a surprising number of students sporting both Malfoy's badges and the armbands supporting Diggory.

He was still hearing the voice in his head, but he was learning to ignore it. He didn't mention it to anyone; he didn't want them thinking him mad. It didn't tell him to do bad or dangerous things like he heard happened to some people who heard voices, so he figured it was just his own thoughts being a little more vocal. He spent enough time in hospitals already without getting dragged to see a psychiatrist as well.

He tried Wishing it away, to no effect. Like his epilepsy and sight, this was obviously one of those things that he couldn't fix. Illnesses were beyond him, too; he learnt early that he could fix a broken bone, but was forced to suffer through colds. That hadn't been fun on the streets, but at least the Wizarding World had Pepper Up Potions.

There was a Hogsmeade weekend four days before the First Task. Harry went down with Tyler, Cid, and the Slytherin girls. Being champion made him much more popular among the girls in his year, who previously didn't much care for him unless he could help with their homework. Now they were keen to hang out and defend him against Orion Devaux, who made snide comments about having a half-blood champion and was one of the few people in Slytherin not supporting Harry.

He was actually feeling pretty good by the time they went back for dinner, happy and even confident about whatever the first task was going to be.

Then Snape called him to his office after the meal, sat him down, and told him bluntly, "For the first task, you have to get past a dragon."

 _You're fucked,_ said the voice in his head.

"Why are you telling me?" Harry asked weakly. "Teachers aren't meant to help. It's cheating."

"I can assure you that Karkaroff and Maxime are doing everything in their power to ensure Krum and Delacour have an advantage in this tournament. Besides, I didn't see you objecting to the help Professor Moody gave you."

Snape looked a little bitter when he said that.

"What about Diggory?" Harry asked.

"What about him?"

"Is anyone helping him?"

"He's a Hufflepuff. He would probably reject all offers of help and turn in anyone that gave it," Snape said dryly. "He's also not my concern. You are."

Harry swallowed. "A dragon? A real, live, fire-breathing dragon?"

Snape nodded. "I strongly advise you spend tomorrow thinking about what you're going to do. And… I understand your desire to keep your Wish Magic secret, but I'd much prefer your skills revealed than you dead, Harry."

"So would I," Harry said. "Thanks for telling me, sir."

He spent half the night lying in his bed and thinking about how he was supposed to fight a dragon. Or get past one, Snape had said, so he didn't actually have to _fight_ it. Sneaking _was_ his speciality… he spent years hiding from people… but he'd rather not reveal his Wish Magic if he didn't absolutely have to.

It was three in the morning and he was almost asleep when he realised he didn't have to. He had another way to turn invisible and much that he hated the thought of revealing the Invisibility Cloak to everyone—it was his dad's, he wanted to keep it to himself—he knew he'd rather everyone know he had an Invisibility Cloak than everyone know he could simply Wish himself invisible.

He spent the next day in the library, reading up on dragons. He might have a plan of action, but he wasn't stupid enough to go up against a dragon without knowing more than the basics about them. He also wasn't even sure if an invisibility cloak would work against a dragon, but he couldn't find anything definitive either way.

Sunday and Monday passed all too quickly and before he knew it, it was the morning of the first task. It wasn't until the afternoon and he still had to sit through morning classes. He hardly paid any attention in Herbology or Ancient Runes, and at lunch he couldn't bring himself to eat anything. He just sipped water until Snape came down to fetch him.

"Are you ready?"

He wanted to say no, but he nodded and got up to follow him out. He said nothing as Snape led him out the castle, across the grounds, around the forest and to a large tent. They stopped outside.

"You'll do fine," Snape said quietly but firmly. "There are wizards on guard to step in at a moment's notice if something goes wrong. Just do your best."

Harry only nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

Inside the tent, he met with the other champions, who he was glad to see didn't look much better than him, and Ludo Bagman, who beamed cheerfully at them all. He told them that their task was to collect a golden egg and then offered a purple pouch to them, and they each withdraw a miniature model of a dragon. Krum and Fleur didn't look surprised, proving Snape's words that they were getting help, but Diggory went ashen. Harry felt a little bad for him, but only until he pulled out his own model dragon and it was a Hungarian Horntail. He suddenly wished he hadn't spent all of Sunday researching dragons; at least then he wouldn't know that Hungarian Horntails were large, vicious, and capable of shooting flames up to fifty feet.

He was the last one to go out. Sitting in the tent listening to the commentary as the other three fought their dragons didn't help his nerves and he wished he'd been the first to go. He was only glad that the voice in his head wasn't saying anything. Maybe it had finally gone away.

When it was finally his turn, the Horntail didn't move as he stepped into the enclosure, like he thought it would. He expected it to charge towards him, but it remained hunched over its eggs, yellow eyes fixed on him, vicious tail swaying slightly. He swallowed, steeled his nerve, and raised his wand.

" _Accio Invisibility Cloak!_ "

It seemed to take an age to arrive. He left it tucked under his pillow just that morning and in the time it took to reach him he thought someone had nicked it and it was never going to arrive, but then the fine cloth came racing towards him and he snatched it out of the air, threw it around his shoulders and disappeared from view.

He instantly felt calmer, which he knew was ridiculous because there was still a dragon in front of him, but there was a familiarity and comfort in being hidden. Now he just had to get the egg.

He Wished the cloak to remain in place, keeping him hidden from view without having to worry that it'd slip and reveal him to the dragon. He almost took to the air then, thinking he'd be safe while invisible, but Bagman called on Moody to tell everyone what Harry was doing and he reluctantly stayed earthbound.

He started to creep forwards, but the dragon's eyes remained fixed on him and as he got closer it snorted and shifted. Harry stopped, heart pounding, staring up at the dragon. For a moment, he was frozen by an animal fear, a base terror of being the small prey before a large predator.

Then the dragon blinked slowly and the terror broke just enough for him to think. He needed a distraction. Lifting his wand and pointing the tip out the cloak, he aimed at the dragon's head and conjured a large swarm of butterflies. He cast a charm that would keep them fluttering about the dragon's head instead of flying away, and as he hoped the dragon turned its attention away from him. A few butterflies might not have bothered it, but a hundred flapping around its head was certainly enough.

Harry ran, glancing up every so often to make sure the butterflies were still doing their job. As he got closer to the nest, he thought it would all go wrong when the dragon bent her legs, hunching defensively over her eggs, but her belly stayed just high enough for him to crouch under.

It was utterly terrifying. He had so much adrenaline racing through him that his hands shook and his palms were so sweaty he thought he'd drop the egg when he reached it. It took everything he had not to just turn tail and run.

Once he had the egg, he did exactly that, clutching it against his chest even over his cloak. He didn't check on the butterflies, but he heard the dragon roar. He wasn't sure if it was fear or instinct that made him dart behind a rock, dropping to a crouch, but it was a wise choice in any case. He heard a gushing sound and then the air around him turned so warm he choked on it. The rock at his back became hot enough to burn and he thought it might melt, but he couldn't move. The heat was all around him and he'd used up his courage for the day; either he lived through this or he died huddled beneath this rock.

He lived, and when the roaring of the flames faded from his ears he heard footsteps running around him. He forced his head up and his eyes open, and saw half a dozen witches and wizards in leathers all rushing fearlessly towards the dragon, wands out.

"Harry!"

He turned his gaze towards the enclosure entrance. Snape stood there, even paler than usual. Someone was holding him back from rushing into the enclosure, but another leather-clad dragon tamer stalked fearlessly across to Harry—a ginger-haired man Harry recalled seeing with the Weasleys at the Quidditch World Cup.

"Are you hurt?" he asked Harry brusquely, staring at a point a little above Harry's head. It took Harry a moment to realise why; he was still wrapped in his invisibility cloak, only the egg and his hands visible. With effort, he lifted one hand and pushed the cloak down, and the man's eyes shifted to him.

"I think my back is burnt," Harry said, voice shaking.

"Can you stand?"

Harry tried, staggered, and the man caught his arm. He tugged the cloak off and helped Harry to his feet, walking him to the entrance where he passed him over to Snape.

"I've got him, Weasley," Snape snapped, just as vicious as when scolding someone for ruining a potion. Weasley just gave him a cool look and turned back to the enclosure, watching his workmates subdue the dragon. "This way, Evans."

"Why are you angry?" Harry asked as they headed into a second tent where Madam Pomfrey waited. He was glad to see her. As the adrenaline faded from his system, the pain his back grew and he wasn't sure he could stay on his feet for much longer.

"I'm not," Snape said, completely at odds with his tone.

Pomfrey took over then, guiding Harry into one of the cubicles inside the tent. She took Harry's egg from him and gave it to Snape. "Hold that, and stay here," she ordered, ignoring Snape's glower as she tugged the curtains around. "Don't mind him," she said to Harry. "Professor Snape gets snippy when he's worried."

Harry said nothing, just lay face down on the bed. It was a temporary conjuration, not one of the hospital wing beds, but between getting off his feet and having Pomfrey's familiar bustle over him, it was enough to make him finally feel safe and he passed out gladly.

He missed his score being given out, but found out later that he came second, just one point behind Viktor Krum. Marcus Fleetwood had replaced Barty Crouch as the fifth judge, and Harry wondered if he was fair or if the fact that they vaguely knew each other worked in Harry's favour. He wasn't sure which he'd prefer; he wasn't above cheating sometimes, but he also felt it would be better to win with a fair assessment of his skills instead of a biased one.

The second task was set for February and the egg was a clue that would prepare him for it. Harry got it back from Snape once Pomfrey healed his back—it felt worse than it was—then met with his friends and headed back to Slytherin. The rest of the house was already waiting in the common room and greeted him with loud cheers. He let them pull him in and pass him a butterbeer, as long as they let him sit down and rest, watching them party around him.

* * *

At the start of December, the teachers announced that on Christmas there would be a Yule Ball, a traditional part of the tournament. It was only open to fourth years and up—with exception for Harry, who had to attend on account of being a champion. He also, to his great horror, had to take a date and open the ball with a dance.

He had no idea who he wanted to go with, but within a week he had several invitations from various boys and girls. He turned them all down; he didn't want to go with someone he'd never even spoken to before. Three days before the end of term, he was asked by a fifth year girl over a foot taller than him who looked as if she might hit him if he said no. She thankfully didn't when he turned her down, and he sighed with relief then set off for the library only to find Ginny Weasley standing in the hall behind him.

"Hi," he said, hoping she wouldn't squeak and run away like the last time they saw each other.

She did flush. "Hey."

"You alright?"

"Yeah."

There was a brief pause.

 _Well, this is exciting,_ drawled the voice in his head. Harry bit down the urge to tell it to shut up.

"I'm sorry," Ginny suddenly blurted out. "About my reaction when it came out that you're the Boy Who Lived."

"It's okay. I had worse. At least you believe me."

"I do!" she said, then turned an even deeper red as she realised that implied that she hadn't always. "I did doubt it a bit at first. I just… I had this big idea about who the Boy Who Lived was. I heard stories about him—about you—my whole childhood and I… I kind of hero-worshipped you a bit. Well, a lot, actually. My brothers always made fun of me for it."

 _Aww, that's cute, you've got a fangirl._

"When I heard it was you I couldn't believe that this hero I lo- that I really ad-… that you could end up possessed by Tom. I used to think that if you—that is, if the Boy Who Lived, the image I had of him—had found Tom's diary then he would have fought off the possession and defeated it easily, especially after you told me that Tom was You Know Who. But then I remembered something Dumbledore said to me when he got the location of the Chamber of Secrets from my mind. He said you were more susceptible to possession than I was."

Harry frowned. "He said that?"

She nodded. "I didn't ask about it then, but I remembered it this year and it kind of makes sense, doesn't it? You defeated You Know Who as a baby and I always thought that meant you were stronger than everyone else, that you were this special amazing wizard—and I mean, obviously it's amazing that you did that," she said hurriedly, apparently afraid she'd offended him, but then her voice lowered, "but no one knows how, do they? So I thought maybe whatever you did to defeat him also made you susceptible to him. Does that make sense?"

He shrugged. "Maybe, I don't know. I don't even know how I did it, and I don't really like to think about it."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to…"

"It's okay."

She smiled weakly and he smiled back, and she relaxed a little.

"So… was that the only girl that asked you to the ball?" she asked him, and he wasn't sure if he was glad for the change of topic. He didn't want to think about the Yule Ball, either.

"No. Several people have asked."

"No one you like?"

"No one I even know. I've never talked to any of them before, don't even know their names. To be honest I'd rather not go with anyone."

"Don't like balls?"

He shrugged. "Never been to one. I went to a rave once, but I don't think that's the same thing."

"A what?"

"A rave. It's a type of Muggle party, lots of loud music and everyone just goes a bit crazy when they dance. I didn't like it much, but that could have been because I was drunk."

She looked a little bit startled and a little bit impressed. "Well, the ball won't be like that, although I heard Dumbledore ordered a dozen barrels of mead from the Three Broomsticks."

"Really?"

"Apparently. It's probably not true though. I'm jealous, personally. I'd love to go, but unless someone asks…" she trailed off with a shrug.

Harry bit his lip.

 _You're not really considering asking a Gryffindor to this accursed thing? You're a Slytherin! You cannot take a Gryffindor as a date, especially not a wretched Weasley._

Harry wasn't sure what made his voice so prejudiced—he hoped it wasn't indicative of his subconscious—but it made his decision for him.

"Ginny, do you want to go to the ball with me?"

He felt a little less certain when she looked thoroughly startled, but it was too late to take it back.

"Really?"

"As friends," he added. "I don't—I'm not—oh shit, I've offended you. I'm sorry."

She laughed then, to his relief. "No, you didn't offend me. I'm just really surprised. I had a crush on you for years—not you exactly, but the Boy Who Lived."

"Er…" Harry wasn't sure how to deal with that. He didn't really want anyone having a crush on him. He'd only disappoint them. "Do you still?"

"No, sorry."

"That's okay," he said quickly. "I don't really… I'm not interested in all that stuff. Girlfriends and stuff."

"You're gay? Why not ask a boy then?"

"I'm not gay, I'm not interested in _anyone_." He shrugged and said ruefully, "I think there might be something wrong with me, but all this fancying people stuff seems a lot of hassle so maybe I'm the lucky one."

She nodded knowingly. "Honestly, it's so much hassle, you _are_ lucky. But also, there's nothing wrong with you. My brother's like that—Charlie, the second oldest. He's asexual, too."

"Was he at the World Cup? The one with long hair?"

"No, that's Bill. Charlie was the one who helped you out of the dragon enclosure."

"Oh, him. He seemed nice. He works with dragons?"

Ginny grinned. "Yeah, it's pretty cool. But whenever he comes home Mum tries to set him up with her friends' daughters. She says he just hasn't found the right girl yet, but Charlie says he's only got enough love in his heart for his family and his dragons."

Harry quirked an eyebrow. "His dragons?"

"Yeah, he—not like that!" she cried, and Harry burst out laughing. "My brother is not into bestiality."

"If you say so."

"Shut up, Evans," she said, but she was grinning. "Also, yes."

"Yes?"

"I'll go to the ball with you."

He stopped laughing. "Really?"

"What, changed your mind already?"

"N-no. Thanks. Er. Good, I mean. We have to open it, by the way. Do the first dance. Everyone will be watching."

"That'll be fun," she said, her smile turning wicked. "I can't wait to see my brothers' reactions to that. Let's not tell anyone until the day, just to really shock them."

"They're going to want me dead, aren't they?" he asked dryly. "Ron already hates me."

"He doesn't hate you."

"He kind of hates me. I don't even know why."

"You're a Slytherin," she said apologetically.

"It doesn't bother you?"

She shrugged. "You're not so bad."

"Good enough, I guess," he said and she grinned at him. "I guess I'll see you on Christmas, then? Meet in the Entrance Hall before the ball?"

She nodded and held out a fist for him to bump. "See you then."

* * *

The golden egg stumped Harry for a while, so he took it to the Room of Requirement on the first day of the holidays, to work on it without the noise bothering his housemates. He spent an hour shouting at it, questioning it, shaking it vigorously, and Wishing it to make sense. It wasn't until he lost his temper and threw it at the ground with a frustrated yell of "Just speak English!" that it finally made sense. All of a sudden, instead of screaming he heard strange voices singing a rhyme.

It took him almost another hour to figure it out. He listened just long enough to copy the rhyme down, then left the room to wander the castle, thinking. For a long while he took 'we cannot sing above the ground' to mean that it was talking about some underground creature, until he passed a window and happened to glance out at the lake and realise it probably meant underwater.

 _Obviously,_ the voice sneered at him. _Mermaids. Did you think giant moles could sing like that?_

"I didn't hear you giving any helpful suggestions," he muttered, then flushed when a passing sixth year gave him a weird look.

 _It's not my job to work things out for you._

"Then keep your comments to yourself."

 _Make me._

Harry grit his teeth and said nothing. It was probably a bad idea to engage with it at all.

* * *

All too soon, it was Christmas. Harry and Tyler had the third year dorm to themselves, the others having not been asked to the ball and gone home for the break. Tyler had confessed to Harry that he had a date for the Yule Ball, but wouldn't say who. Harry didn't push it seeing as his own date remained a secret—a secret the whole school felt it necessary to gossip about. Harry even heard suggestions that he was going with Viktor Krum, whose own date was also a topic of highly contested information that no one could confirm

He and Tyler spent the afternoon in a Slytherin versus Gryffindor snowball fight, then returned to their dorm to change into their dress robes. Harry's had been hurriedly bought on the last Hogsmeade weekend; unlike the upper years, he hadn't been told to purchase any at the start of the year, under the expectation that third years wouldn't be in attendance. They were a navy blue and he'd picked them mostly at random.

Tyler spent most of his time trying to figure out what to do with his hair. "I don't want to look girly," he grumbled, tying it in a half-ponytail then pulling the tie out immediately and glaring at the mirror. He stroked his chin. "This won't be a problem as soon as I grow a beard. No one will ever mistake me for a girl when I have a beard."

"You'll just look like a young Dumbledore," Harry said, and Tyler snorted.

"I'm not growing a beard like _that_. Something stylish. A short one. Five o'clock shadow type thing maybe. Or maybe a beard I can tie into little braids."

"Aren't braids girly?"

" _Hair_ braids. No one thinks beards are girly."

"I guess."

Eventually Tyler settled for tying his hair into a messy bun and they left the dorm together.

"So is your date a Slytherin?" Tyler asked.

"No. Yours?"

He nodded and they stopped inside the common room, looking around at the unusual array of colour as everyone showed off (or just stood nervously in) their dress robes.

Malfoy came up to them, dressed in black robes with a high collar.

"Where's your date, Evans?" he asked.

"We're meeting at the Entrance Hall. Where's yours?" He couldn't imagine Malfoy going with someone who wasn't a Slytherin. He had heard that Pansy Parkinson was going with him, but she was stood with Adrian Pucey, a sixth year.

"He's standing next to you."

Harry blinked, looked at Tyler, back at Malfoy, back to Tyler. "Seriously?"

"Seriously," Tyler said, moving to stand next to Malfoy. "Why not?"

"I… I just… I didn't know you liked him," Harry said weakly.

"Who said anything about liking him?"

"I can change my mind, Lyle," Malfoy said.

"Got a back-up, have you, Malfoy?" Tyler retorted.

"Of course," Malfoy said, ignoring Tyler's disbelieving look.

Pansy Parkinson stalked up to them. "Draco, I want a word."

"Aren't we leaving now? We don't want to be late, Pansy."

She glared at him. "Draco."

He looked back coolly. "What, Pansy? If you have something to say, then say it."

"I'm not the one that's saying anything. If you got out there with that boy…"

Malfoy voice was quiet. "Then everyone knows who I am. I know what I'm doing, Pans."

"Are you sure you want to do this, Draco?"

"I've never pretended to be anyone other than myself, Pansy. I'm not going to stop now just because our parents prefer to keep things behind closed doors."

For a long moment, they just stared at each other. Harry, confused, looked at Tyler, but he was watching Malfoy and Parkinson.

Parkinson sighed. "You're an utter fool, Draco Malfoy," she said, then leant in to kiss Malfoy's cheek before returning to Pucey.

"What was that about?" Harry asked.

Malfoy glanced at him and smiled. He looked more relaxed than he had before Pansy came over. "Don't worry you little halfie brain about it, Evans."

Harry glared at him then transferred his gaze to Tyler. "Remind me why you're going with him?"

Tyler shrugged. "He's good looking. Also, he asked me after Vincent Crabbe did and I think I was just glad to get asked by someone who hasn't spent the last two and a half years honestly thinking I was a girl."

Harry glanced over at where Crabbe stood with Gregory Goyle, neither of them with dates. "Hasn't he ever seen you in the boys' bathroom?"

"Apparently not. Shall we go?"

Reluctantly, Harry nodded. Malfoy, he noticed, looked almost as hesitant to go out as he was.

At the Entrance Hall Harry left Tyler and Malfoy with the rest of the Slytherins and went in search of Ginny. He was surprised to see Alex Stone standing with an older boy Harry didn't recognise, and Neville with Parvati Patil. For some reason, he'd assumed Neville and Hermione would be going together, but he couldn't see Hermione anywhere.

He eventually saw Ginny standing by the hourglasses that marked the house points, but he hesitated to go over when he saw her brothers crowding around her. Ron was talking insistently, George was scanning the hall and peering suspiciously at anyone that came near, and Fred was fingering his wand.

The front doors swung open then and Harry had to hurriedly move aside as the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students entered, and by the time they passed McGonagall was calling out, "Champions over here, please!"

Harry looked across the hall, but Ginny had extracted herself from her brothers' presence. She was easy to find—he just had to look in the direction of Ron's piercing stare. She was heading to where McGonagall stood so Harry went over as well, meeting her there.

"Hey," he greeted. "Managed to get away from your brothers I see."

She rolled her eyes. "They're such a pain in the—"

"Miss Weasley," McGonagall interrupted with a stern look.

"Sorry, professor."

"Is that all of you? Good, wait here, please, while everyone else enters."

She ushered them to one side of the doors and Harry took a look at the other champions' dates. Diggory was with Cho Chang, the Ravenclaw seeker; Fleur was with Roger Davis, the Ravenclaw Quidditch captain, who was staring at her in apparent shock that she choose him; and Krum was with—

"Hermione!"

She turned. "Harry! Hi. Ginny? What are you doing here?"

Ginny flushed and glanced at Harry. Harry felt his own cheeks go warm. "She's my date."

Hermione blinked. "Oh. I didn't know you were friends."

The Great Hall doors opened and other students filed past them. Many people gaped at Hermione in disbelief, or glared jealously. A few people looked enviously at Ginny, and the Weasley boys glowered at Harry as they passed and Fred mouthed, 'I'm watching you.'

When everyone else was in, Harry embarrassedly held out his arm for Ginny and they walked in after the rest of the champions. Inside the hall, the house tables were gone, replaced by dozens of smaller round ones. A larger table sat at the front of the hall, reserved for the judges and champions.

It wasn't so bad. The food was as good as always, Ginny was an engaging conversationalist, and Harry got to hear Krum learning how to pronounce Hermione's name. Karkaroff had a few unpleasant things to say, and clearly didn't like his champion having a Hogwarts girl for a date, but Dumbledore and Marcus Fleetwood had a few surprisingly amusing comments.

When everyone had eaten, Dumbledore stood up and moved all the tables aside with a sweep of his wand, then conjured a platform along the right wall. The Weird Sisters clumped out onto it, all wearing artfully ripped clothes and carrying instruments.

Harry sighed heavily. "Ready to make a fool of ourselves?" he asked Ginny.

"It won't be so bad."

"You haven't seen me dance," he warned her, getting to his feet and moving to the dance floor.

"Are you that bad?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "I've never danced before."

It could have been worse, he supposed, as they revolved slowly on the spot, avoiding the glaring eyes of the Weasley boys, but Harry was glad when other couples joined them and the attention left the champions. When the song ended, he opened his mouth to say that they should sit this one out (and hoped she wouldn't want him to dance again), but before he could Fred and George Weasley appeared. Fred took Ginny's hand and pulled her into a whirling dance before she could object and George slung an arm around Harry's shoulders.

"So," he said cheerfully, walking briskly towards the door and dragging Harry along with him. "Harry. Lets have a chat about you and my sister, and how there is no 'you and my sister'."

"I'm not going to hurt her. I don't even fancy her, it's not like we're—"

"Oh, well, now we've already got problems. You're leading her on. I didn't know you were such a heartless bastard, Evans. Quite the disappointment from the Boy Who Lived."

"That's not what I meant," Harry said, wrenching himself out of George's grip and turning to glare at him. They were in the Entrance Hall now, which was mostly empty but for a few couples that were drifting towards the fairy-lit gardens outside. "Ginny knows I don't fancy her, I told her when I asked her to go with me. We're just here as friends."

"You might think that," George said, his tone much less cheerful now, "but Ginny's always had a thing for you, Evans. You ask her to be your date to a ball and she'll get the wrong idea."

" _You've_ got the wrong idea, about me _and_ Ginny. She doesn't fancy me."

"She's fancied you since she was three years old. You're her hero."

"No, some made up fantasy Boy Who Lived was her hero, not me. She told me all about it. She knows better now."

"Yeah, I do," Ginny's angry voice said, and they both turned to see her stalking out the Great Hall, Fred close behind. "I agreed to be his date so I could get a chance to come to this ball and have fun, not because I fancy him, because I _don't_. So instead of worrying about my date, why don't you shove off and worry about who _your_ dates are hanging out with while you're bothering us?"

She didn't wait for an answer, just grabbed Harry's hand and dragged him back into the hall. He stuttered an objection when she pulled him to the dance floor, but she either ignored it or didn't hear. The music was at least more upbeat for this song so instead of dancing close and slow, they joined a general throng of lively dancers, which wasn't so bad. Harry did insist on withdrawing afterwards, going to the drinks table to cool off a bit.

"Survived the Weasley boys then."

Harry glanced around as Tyler reached past him to grab a couple of bottles of Butterbeer. "Yeah, just about."

"Braver man than me."

"You're a disgrace to the name of Slytherin, Evans," Malfoy said, but without any real malice. He did shoot Ginny a sneering look, but said nothing to her, and Tyler tugged him away to find some seats. Ginny stared after them.

"Are they here together? Malfoy and Tyler?"

Harry nodded. He noticed her expression was not dissimilar to that of some of the Slytherins earlier that evening.

"So what? Pansy Parkinson acted like it was a big deal. I thought you purebloods didn't mind people being gay."

"Of course not," Ginny said, shooting him an offended look, "but for families like the Malfoys they still insist you marry, and you can't marry someone of the same sex."

"What's that got to do with Malfoy taking Tyler as a date? It's not like they're going to fall in love and want to get married or anything. It's just a stupid school dance."

"I thought you'd know all this, being in Slytherin," she commented, but explained, "The Malfoys and their ilk are all about appearances. It might be just a school dance for you, but there enough people and visiting foreigners that his parents would expect him to keep up appearances, which means having a girl for a date. Only child, too, so he's expected to carry on the family name. It wouldn't be such a big deal if he had an older brother."

"Are your family like that?" he asked, and she looked utterly disgusted.

"My family are nothing like the Malfoys."

"Sorry."

"Really, nothing like the Malfoys."

"Okay."

"Bill could be open about it if he was gay."

"I get it, you're not like the Malfoys."

"Good. I can't believe you'd even say that."

"You want to dance again?" he asked, just to change the topic.

"Yes."

They went outside afterwards, the chill winter air pleasantly cool after working up a sweat on the dance floor. They walked slowly along the paths, passed Snape blasting bushes and deducting points from trysting couples, and eventually came to a bench. Harry suggested they sit down, but Ginny shook her head.

"I'm getting cold, can we go back inside?"

Harry looked towards the front doors, imagining the throng of people inside. Even after all this time at Hogwarts, he still found people overwhelming sometimes, craving the solitude of his younger years. He found it emotionally exhausting to be social sometimes, and the ball had already stretched his limits.

Ginny saw his reluctance. "You can stay here if you want. I don't mind going alone."

"You sure?" he asked, feeling bad about abandoning her but really not wanting to go back into that crowd.

"Yeah. I think some of those Beauxbatons boys were looking at me. Maybe I can get one to dance with me and really give my brothers someone to worry about."

"You enjoy antagonising them, don't you?"

"They make it too easy. I'll see you around?"

"Sure. Have fun."

They fist bumped and she set off, and Harry sat down.

 _Please go back to Slytherin,_ the voice said, sounding more irritated with being social than even he was. _You've fulfilled your obligation, go back to the dorm._

Harry ignored it. He glanced around, checking no one could see him, then conjured a few gleaming blue butterflies.

 _You have homework to do. You could be reading. You could be doing anything more productive than sitting here._

One of the butterflies fluttered down to land on his nose and he smiled, reaching up to gently nudge it off.

 _I'm bored,_ the voice whined.

Harry leant back on the bench, butterflies flitting about his head, and ignored it.

* * *

 **A/N:** In case anyone is afraid the Assistant's meddling will return things to canon plot, have faith. I'm not rehashing all of canon at this point. :)


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

"I can't believe you're abandoning me."

Harry rolled his eyes at Tyler's whining, stuffing clothes and books into his backpack in preparation for going to Saint Mungo's for his MRI and MEEG. Tyler lay across his own bed, head hanging down over the edge so his face was turning red and his hair brushed the floor.

"What am I meant to do?"

"I dunno. Hang out with Malfoy," Harry suggested. "He's your boyfriend now, isn't he?"

"No."

"I thought things went well at the Yule Ball." He'd assumed so when he'd seen them making out enthusiastically behind a bush that night, when he'd been returning to the castle. They weren't the only couple he'd seen; he'd accidentally interrupted Alex Stone with his date, but Alex had looked relieved rather than annoyed so he didn't feel too bad for it.

"It did, but we're not going out. I don't want anything serious and neither does he, probably because he's got the hots for you."

Harry threw a pillow at him. "Shut up."

Tyler caught the pillow and threw it back. "I'm serious. You could see the jealousy all over him when he watched you dance with Ginny."

"If he fancies me so much why didn't he ask me to the ball?"

"Dunno, but I'm pretty sure he was just using me for practice. Not that I mind."

"Whatever," Harry said. "You're wrong, he doesn't fancy me. Go hang out with Alex if you're bored. I've got to go."

He spent a week on the MEEG this time and he worried that one of the tests would discover the voice he was hearing, but Kirith never said anything. The voice itself hardly spoke while he was in there. Harry tried to convince himself that meant it was going away, but he had this strange feeling it was just hiding while he was surrounded by healers.

After the MEEG, Kirith did a few more spell tests, then said, "You're really not an ideal candidate for a nerve prosthetic. You're probably never going to be."

Harry slumped. "Never?"

"Not really," she said, then took in his dejected figure and said slowly, "But… look, you're not ideal. The epilepsy makes it very risky. However…"

He looked up, barely daring to hope. "What?"

She hesitated, looking uncertain, then: "It could be done. Harry, listen," she went on sternly when he sat up, grinning. "Don't get excited yet. If— _if_ —we did this, it would be a very dangerous procedure. If you had a seizure while we were creating the nerves, it could cause irreparable brain damage. It could kill you."

That stopped him smiling. "For real?"

"Yes. Even if it doesn't, it could leave you comatose for life. Even a brief absence seizure could cause unknown amounts of damage. We're talking about brain surgery, Harry. It's risky even for someone without epilepsy."

He bit his lip, considering that. Was getting his full vision back worth risking death or a coma?

 _Three years, three months,_ whispered the voice, startling him. _Three years, three months and you're dead anyway._

He looked at Kirith. "What do you think the chances are I'll have a seizure while you're doing it?"

She looked down at his seizure diary, open on her desk. "You've been better this year, the anticonvulsant is working… there's really no way to guess…" She glanced at him. "I'd really prefer to wait until you were older. Once you're out of puberty, things are likely to change."

"But could you do it now?"

"Do you really want to risk it?"

"Yes."

She inhaled and let it out heavily. "Alright. But you need Sirius Black's permission. Don't look at me like that. You're a minor, you need your guardian's permission for a procedure this risky. And I will be talking to him personally, making sure he knows exactly the risks involved."

He grumbled, but nodded. Sirius would surely agree. He loved risk-taking.

* * *

On the first day of classes after the holiday, a news article revealed that Hagrid was a half-giant, and he stopped teaching classes in shame. Harry wasn't overly surprised by the news—he just tried not to think about the process that led to a half-giant baby, something Cid horrified their classmates with—and it didn't change his opinion of Hagrid, which was decidedly apathetic.

Harry got a letter from Sirius saying Andrew Hopkins had confessed to breaking confidentiality. He'd done it for a bribe, but couldn't or wouldn't admit who bribed him. His healer's licence was revoked, and he settled to an out of court agreement to pay 2,000 Galleons compensation to Harry to avoid a prison sentence.

Sirius also mentioned that he hadn't seen Kirith yet, but he had an appointment to speak with her.

Glad as he was with that, Harry was forced to face up to a bigger problem: the second task. He went to stand by the lake after lessons one day and stared out over the rippling water. It was dark and vast and somewhere deep in it was a giant squid and, apparently, mermaids.

He had to spend an hour in that. Not only did he have to figure out how to breathe underwater, he had to learn how to swim, with less than two months to do it in.

Maybe he could treat it like flying, just Wish his body to move at his command and glide through the water…

But the thought scared him. It was strange. He'd never been afraid of drowning before, but now he was faced with this he found himself terrified that even if he Wished himself able to breathe underwater, he'd get trapped down there, stuck in the deep dark depths of the lake to never be seen again.

He needed to learn how to swim. Maybe he wouldn't be so afraid if he did that.

He went to Hermione and Neville. He spent more time with Cid and Tyler these days and would have to admit that he was closer to them than his old friends, but he didn't want to admit to them that he couldn't swim. They were great friends, but they hadn't kept his secrets for years and as close as they were, he still trusted Hermione and Neville a little more.

Neville promptly suggested gillyweed as a way to breathe underwater, which solved one problem, but still left him with the major one.

"We could teach you," Hermione suggested. "It can't be that hard. Swimming's easy. We could do it out at the lake—"

"No way," Harry interrupted. "I'm not learning to swim in that. I'll drown. And everyone will see me."

"What about the Room of Requirement?" Neville said. "We could make it become a swimming pool, and it'll have floats and things, too, won't it?"

It was an admittedly perfect idea, so that Saturday Harry met them on the seventh floor. The Room provided them with a perfect pool, flippers and floats, lifejackets and armbands. There was even a pile of swimwear over by a changing room.

Harry frowned at them. "I don't have any swimming trunks of my own. Do you think I can get some in Hogsmeade?"

"Probably," Neville said. "There's a Hogsmeade trip next weekend, you can look then. C'mon, let's change."

Harry picked a pair for swim shorts from the pile and went into a cubicle, Hermione and Neville taking one each for themselves, and shuffled out afterwards feeling incredibly awkward. Hermione and Neville were already in the pool, Hermione swimming a lap and Neville waiting on the steps leading into the shallow end. Hermione swam to join him and looked up at Harry, who resisted the urge to run back to the changing room or grab a towel. He'd never been this undressed in front of a girl before.

"In you get then," she said.

"I'm not sure this is a good idea," he countered. "I could have a seizure."

"You're not unsupervised. If you have one, we'll get you out quickly."

"We can always get Madam Pomfrey to sit in," Neville suggested, and Harry shook his head. He wasn't learning to swim under Pomfrey's watch; this was humiliating enough as it was.

Taking a bracing breath, he slid into the water.

He didn't even last fifteen minutes. He freaked out when they tried teaching him to float on his back, convinced he was going to sink and drown even though he was still in water shallow enough that it only reached his waist. He retreated to the steps and sat with a towel wrapped around his shoulders, only his feet in the water as he watched them swim around. They tried convincing him to have another go, even suggesting they use the floats or armbands, but he shook his head, stubbornly refusing to leave his spot and ignoring the insults the voice sneered at him.

An hour later, Harry headed down to Snape's office, knocking and getting called to enter. Snape was bent over his desk, marking homework, but he glanced up when Harry shuffled forwards.

"Is everything alright?"

Harry hesitated, wondering if he really wanted to do this, but he knew he had little choice. It had to be done. "Do you know what the second task is?"

Snape frowned. "I am not telling you it when you have the means of learning it yourself. There is a difference between cheating and pure laziness."

"That's not—I already figured it out. I just… I wanted to… ask… something."

"Extra precautions are being taken in consideration of your epilepsy. Your safety is top priority."

"I can't swim," Harry blurted.

Snape set down his quill and leant back in his chair. "Ah."

"Sir, I… I know I've been not very nice to you sometimes and I know I attacked you that time—and I'm sorry about that—" ( _No you're not,_ the voice whispered) "—but… I do trust you. Even though you didn't help me as a kid, you've helped me recently and you let me stay at your house and got me to see the healers and everything, and… please will you teach me how to swim?"

Hermione and Neville were great and he did trust them, but not so much that he could relax enough to learn how to swim. He thought about getting Sirius or Remus, but much that he liked them he hadn't known them long enough to really trust them with something like this. It had to be Snape. Harry might dislike him, and even that was fading, but he trusted him. Snape saved his life before, helped him through seizures, saw him bleeding to death, and supported him even when Harry hated him. Despite what Snape did, or didn't do, when Harry was little, when it came to his safety now, there was no one Harry trusted more.

"I will, under the condition that you tell absolutely no one about it. Not your friends and especially not Black."

"Thank you! I won't, I promise."

"I will investigate local swimming pools. I'm sure you don't want to learn in the lake anymore than I want to teach you there."

"There's a swimming pool on the seventh floor."

"No, there—please tell me you didn't Wish a swimming pool into Hogwarts."

"I didn't. There's this room…"

He explained the Room, to Snape's clear intrigue, and then left with the promise that they would begin tomorrow morning.

 _Won't this be fun?_ the voice mocked. _A nice bonding experience with our greasy Head of House. Did you consider whether he actually knows how to swim? That hair makes me think he might have a mortal fear of water._

"He wouldn't have said yes if he didn't know how," Harry pointed out, then looked around to make sure there was no one to see him talking to himself, but the corridor was empty.

 _Well, I suppose not, but you've got more faith in the man than I do._

* * *

"Relax."

"I am."

"No, you're not."

"Well how can I relax when I keep sinking?"

"Relax, and you'll stop sinking."

"That's completely unhelpful. I can't do it."

"With an attitude like that, you certainly can't."

"You're not helping!"

Harry sat on the steps of the pool, feet in the water, arms crossed and face twisted into a scowl. Snape sat lower, submerged up to the chest as he considered Harry. He looked most peculiar in a very old-fashioned swimsuit that covered him from neck to knees; Harry had had to resist the urge to laugh when he first saw it.

"What are you afraid of, Harry?"

Harry shrugged.

"Drowning?"

"I guess," he muttered.

"I'm not going to let you. I'm perfectly capable of hauling you out of the water, I know how to resuscitate a person, and that door leads straight into the Hospital Wing in the event that, Merlin forbid, something I can't handle does occur."

Harry looked at the second door in the room, one that hadn't been there when he, Hermione, and Neville made the room. "It does?"

"Yes. I am not an idiot, Harry. I was not going to teach an epileptic person how to swim without taking proper precautions. You are not going to drown. So are you ready to try again?"

"Not really," he said, but slid further into the water.

It took them most of the morning, but once he finally figured out how to relax, the rest came fairly easily. By the time Snape said they'd stop for the day, he could swim the short width of the pool without touching the bottom, though he'd only done so in the shallow end.

"We will do this again next Sunday; you'll need to be confident swimming underwater for the task. Have you figured out how to breathe yet?"

Harry nodded, Wishing his hair dry. Snape had done his own with a blast of hot air from his wand. "Gillyweed. I'll get some from Hogsmeade on Saturday."

"Make sure it's freshwater; it's more effective given that that's what you'll be swimming in. Do _not_ come back here to practice alone. If I found out you have, you'll be spending every Saturday until the end of the year in detention."

Harry promised him he wouldn't, and meant it. The last thing he wanted to do was swim alone.

* * *

The following Saturday, Harry walked down to Hogsmeade with Cid and Tyler. He spent the morning with them, visiting Honeydukes and Zonko's and the Three Broomsticks, but after lunch he left them and headed for the clothes shop.

He'd just started browsing the men's swimwear when a voice beside him said, "Please tell me you're not going to get the red ones."

Harry jumped, dropping a pair of swim shorts as Malfoy came up on his left. "Don't sneak up on me like that," he snapped. "What's wrong with the red ones?"

"Firstly, you're too pale to wear red this bright, and secondly, you're a _Slytherin_."

"Well firstly, I don't care what you think, and secondly, it's none of your business anyway. Go away."

"No," Malfoy said, now browsing through the trunks himself. "I'm assuming this has something to do with the second Triwizard task—I saw Krum diving into the lake on my way down here—and I'm not letting you go out in front of the whole school in Gryffindor colours. Here."

He held up a pair of emerald green swimming trunks. Harry barely glanced at them. "I want shorts."

Malfoy rolled his eyes, looking through the rack but finding no shorts in green. "Then go with the navy."

"So Ravenclaw colours are fine?" Harry said snottily.

"Navy, Evans, not blue. Do you know anything about colours? Or fashion, for that matter?"

"Clothes are clothes," Harry muttered. "As long as they're comfortable and warm, what does it matter?"

In the end, he did get the navy ones, but only because they didn't have the red ones in his size.

He visited the apothecary afterwards to buy some gillyweed. Malfoy tagged after him.

"Don't you have your own friends to go off with?"

"Of course, but I want to hang out with you."

"Still trying to be my friend?" Harry mocked, but remembered Tyler's comments about Malfoy at the Yule Ball and felt suddenly uncomfortable about teasing him. What if Tyler was right and Malfoy did want to be more than friends?

"What can I say, I'm determined. I'm starting to grow on you, admit it."

"I hate you."

Malfoy grinned. "No, Weasley hates me. You just sort of dislike me."

"What makes you so sure about that?"

"You haven't told me to shove off."

"Shove off, Malfoy."

Malfoy just laughed. "You want to know how I really know you don't hate me?"

"Not really."

"You never asked if I was really the one to out you to the press. You trust me."

"I _don't_ ," Harry immediately refuted. "I didn't need to ask if it was you. You didn't know all that information that Skeeter included."

"But I could have told her who you were and then she got that information from someone else."

"Did you?"

"No. I said I'd keep your secrets, and I will."

"You don't know any of my secrets, not any more."

"If I did," Malfoy said, smiling at him. "If I knew any, I'd keep them for you."

Harry thought he might actually believe him.

* * *

At the start of February, Harry got a letter from Kirith saying that she'd spoken with Sirius, got his agreement for the procedure, and it was booked for the Easter holiday. Harry was so pleased he shouted a loud, "Yes!" right in the middle of breakfast, drawing stares and not caring as he jiggled about on his seat, too happy to keep still.

He was so pleased he didn't even worry about his swimming lesson that morning. Now that he'd got the basics down, they were progressing well and Snape was getting him to practice underwater that morning.

By the morning of the twenty-fourth, he was confident enough for the task, though he would be glad when it was over. He was mostly concerned with how he'd find whatever it was the mermaids had taken and the possibility of having a seizure while he was under. He researched the gillyweed and figured out how much he'd need to last him an hour, but took an extra handful in his shorts pocket just in case; he learnt the spell to defeat grindylows; and he made a waterproof tracking arrow which he attached to his medical bracelet with a bit of string.

He wasn't totally sure how effective it would be; he wrote _Harry Evans' stolen item for second Triwizard task_ , but it'd be a lot easier if he knew what they'd taken. He checked his trunk in the morning but everything was in it as far as he could tell; he thought they might take Kiwi, but she was still there, thankfully. The lake water would've ruined her fur.

When he got to the lake, Madam Pomfrey and an unfamiliar woman were waiting by the judges' table. As the stands across the lake filled with spectators and the champions got ready, Dumbledore beckoned Harry over and introduced him to the stranger.

She was an unremarkable looking woman with mousy-brown hair tied up in a ponytail, face free of make-up, and wearing a pair of tracksuit trousers over a red and white swimsuit. She had a small sports bag hanging from one shoulder, and she stared at Harry—not at his scar, like most people, but at his whole face. For a moment, Harry thought he saw something like sadness flicker on her face, especially as she stared at his good eye, and then she looked away and the expression vanished.

"Mr Evans, this is Amy Wesson, an emergency response healer," Dumbledore explained. "She will accompany you into the lake. She is there purely for the instance that you have a seizure. She is not permitted to assist you in any other way and you must not ask her to, as she has agreed to take Veritaserum at the end of the task to tell us if you asked for help. If she assists you in any way except for medical reasons, you will automatically receive no points for this task. Is that clear?"

Harry nodded. "Yes, sir."

Amy told him she'd follow him closely and showed him some hand signals he was to use if he needed her to get him out of the water, and then they and the other champions lined up along the edge of the lake. Harry self-consciously stripped to his swimming shorts while Amy put her trousers in the sport bag and took out a pair of flippers, one red and one white. Ludo Bagman amplified his voice to introduce the task, taking a moment to explain Amy, and Harry took out his gillyweed, checked he still had the spare portion, and waited for the countdown.

On the whistle blow, he gulped the slimy gillyweed down, shuddering at the feel of it, and waded out into the water until he was chest deep, then sunk down. Behind him, Amy cast a spell that created a large bubble around her head and, although she didn't have webbed hands like the gillyweed gave Harry, her flippers let her keep up with him fine. He was surprised at how speedy his webbed hands and feet made him, and quickly swam out towards the centre of the lake.

Lingering fears of drowning kept him near the surface, but when he was far enough from the shore that he couldn't see the bottom, that only deep water loomed beneath him, he paused to draw his wand and touch it to his tracking arrow, pretending to cast a spell as he was under supervision. Amy watched curiously, but said nothing.

To Harry's annoyance, but no real surprise, his Wish didn't work. His arrow just floated in the water, useless, pointing at nothing. He looked down into the darkness below, intimidated at the thought of going deeper. This wasn't the pool. There was no Snape to haul him up if something went wrong, to assure him he was fine. He might have Amy, but she was a stranger. It wasn't as comforting.

But he had no choice. He couldn't float by the surface for the next hour, so he braced himself, twisted, and swam down. Grindylows tried to grab him as he got deeper, but he cursed them away and after blasting a few with jets of boiling water, the rest just shook their fists and swam away.

Then he found himself in a forest of weeds, huge gently waving fronds as tall as giants. He stopped at the edge of them, looking up and down, and then stared up into the dark water above him. It wasn't pitch black down here, but he couldn't see the surface, had no idea how deep he was. If the gillyweed wore off, he could never reach the surface in time. He couldn't even teleport himself out; the lake was within the Hogwarts boundaries and protected by the anti-Apparition spells, which were something even his magic couldn't get around.

He could drown down here.

Amy touched his arm and he yelped, jerking away. Her face looked strange under the bubble of air, but he thought she looked concerned. She made the sign for 'okay?'

Harry looked up, staring into the darkness again. He could get out now, if he wanted. He could tell her no and she'd take him back to shore—

 _And everyone will know you're a cowardly little child._

He looked down. He touched his pocket, felt the extra portion of gillyweed. If it came to it, he could Wish himself a bubble like Amy's.

 _You will do this,_ the voice said. It was almost a threat more than an encouragement, but at least it wasn't insulting him.

He returned the 'okay' sign, and they swam on.

The mermaids' song came through the gloom, letting him know that half his hour had passed, and he headed in the direction of the voices, but Amy suddenly grabbed him. He turned to see her pulling one leg up, using him to hold herself steadily in place as she slipped a finger in the back of her red flipper. She pulled it off and held it out towards him.

"What?" Harry tried to ask, but all that came out were bubbles. Amy wiggled the flipper at him, pushing it against his chest. Not knowing what else to do, Harry grabbed it. Amy still didn't let go, and her hand around his arm tightened—

—the familiar feeling of a Portkey wrenched at his stomach. The water vanished around him a blur of colour, rushing away from him, the flipper stuck to his hands, and then he slammed down hard on something. His legs collapsed under him and he landed hard, one hand scrabbling at the wood floor, the other pressing against the gills on his throat as he tried to gasp. He felt like he was choking on water and it hurt, stabbing his neck and his lungs burning as they starved of oxygen even though he was surrounded by air—

Glass appeared around him, water filling it from the bottom, and his head stopped spinning as he took an oxygen-filled gulp of water. Looking around, he found himself in a tank— _more of a coffin,_ said the voice in his head as he turned over. The tank was barely long and wide enough to hold him, filled with two feet of water and a few more inches above that of air before the glass top.

He rolled onto his front again. Two concentric white circles were painted on the floor, surrounding the tank, with runes painted between the circles. He couldn't make them out well enough to try and translate them—but he didn't need to, to know what they did. When he tried to Wish the tank larger, nothing happened, nor when he Wished the effects of the gillyweed away, nor any other Wish he tried to make.

Magic-suppression. He tried not to panic, unsure what would happen if he started hyperventilating while the gillyweed was still in effect. He didn't even have his wand; he could see it on the floor, just on the other side of the tank.

The glass was clear and the water still, so he could make out a large room around him. Dusty curtains hung over the windows, keeping out the daylight and leaving the room lit by candles in the chandeliers overhead. There was an end table holding a folded robe, a bone, and a knife, and next to it was a large cauldron—taller than his tank and wide enough for a full grown man to sit inside.

On the other side of the end table was a single chair with a thick snake coiled half beneath it and someone—some _thing_ —sitting in it. It was about the size of a five-year-old, but its skin was scaly-looking, dark red and raw, and its face was flat and snake-like. The very sight of it made Harry want to recoil in repulsion.

Shuddering, Harry looked around at the other people in the room. He was confused at first, when he saw two of Amy; one lay on the floor, unmoving, and the other moved to stand beside a man in black robes, a white and silver mask covering his face. Harry assumed it was a man, anyway, as their chest was flat.

The Amy on the floor was dry and naked. Harry avoided looking at her, but even the brief glimpse he got showed her chest didn't rise and fall. The other one, the one who'd kidnapped him and was presumably Polyjuiced or transfigured to look like Amy, dried herself off with a blast of air from her wand, took some robes from a bag the masked man held out, and then began to peel off her swimsuit. Both her flippers were already on the floor.

Other than the two Amys and the masked man, there was one other person, one Harry recognised—Peter Pettigrew. As Harry watched, Pettigrew said something, but all he heard was a distorted murmur of noise, unable to make out the words. The thing in the chair shifted, and the masked man made a sharp gesture.

Pettigrew picked up the thing in the chair, carried it to the cauldron, and dropped it in, making a few drops of clear liquid splash over the sides. Harry hoped it drowned. Pettigrew took up the bone from the table, said something else, then put that in the cauldron, too. It sent sparks in all directions, glowing blue.

Pettigrew picked up the knife. He looked nervous as he held his left hand over the cauldron and put the knife to his wrist. He said something, took a deep breath, then raised the knife and swung it down hard, cutting off his hand. He screamed, loud enough to be clear even through the water, and sank to his knees, sobbing and clutching the bloody stump to his chest.

The man in the mask made a gesture, then tapped the fake Amy. She wore the robe now, and the swimsuit and flippers were on the dead woman. The fake one went to Pettigrew, took the knife, and approached the tank. The masked man waved his wand and the top disappeared, and Amy reached in and grabbed Harry's wrist. Harry took a deep breath and surged up, intending to reach over and grab his wand.

"Precious, stop him!"

Amy jerked Harry back and kicked Harry's wand away, sending it skittering across the room. She slashed the knife against Harry's upper arm and held it there even as Harry struggled, letting his blood settle onto the blade. Harry tried to hit her, but she jerked back, and let him go, and Harry had no choice but to sink back beneath the water because his lungs were beginning to burn again. As soon as he was submerged, the lid reappeared, dropping down heavily and remaining firmly in place when Harry tried to push at it.

Amy took the knife to the cauldron, holding the blade over it and letting Harry's blood drip off. The liquid inside turned blinding white. It shot sparks, then billowed steam, so thick that when something moved inside it, all Harry could see was a shadow. It rose up from the cauldron, the folded robe from the table flew over to it and settled in place, and when the steam dispersed, Harry didn't need the voice to tell him who it was.

 _Lord Voldemort has risen again._

* * *

Severus half expected trouble during the second task. Even after their lessons, he could tell Harry was still afraid of swimming, especially in the deep lake. He wouldn't have been surprised if Harry lost his nerve and backed out.

He hadn't expected him to disappear. Severus never removed the emerald pendant charmed to track Harry and he felt it go suddenly chill half an hour into the task. Sitting with the Slytherins, he fought not to slap a hand to his chest to warm the coldness. He stood, snapped at a couple of first years to stop messing about, and left the group of spectators. He headed for the judges' bench, moving as fast as he could without drawing too much attention.

Just as he reached it, there was movement at the water's edge and the spectators chattered and pointed excitedly. Delacour surfaced, her face scratched beneath her Bubblehead Charm, a mermaid supporting her. It helped her until she was in shallow enough water to stand, and Madam Pomfrey and Madame Maxime rushed forwards. Pomfrey threw a towel around the girl, dispelling her Bubblehead Charm and pushing a vial of Soft Swirl Elixir into her hands.

Severus couldn't understand Delacour's French babbling, but he didn't care. He went straight to Dumbledore, still at the judges' table, and bent over to murmur in his ear, "Harry's gone."

Dumbledore looked around at him sharply, gaze flicking briefly down to Severus' chest, and Severus nodded confirmation. Before Dumbledore could speak, however, Pomfrey, Delacour, and Maxime came up to the table.

"Zey disappeared!" Delacour said, looking warmer now, the towel wrapped around her waist. There were more scratches on her arms, neck, and chest above the line of her swimsuit, from grindylows probably. Pomfrey was trying to heal them, but Delacour gestured as she spoke, making it hard. "'Arry Evans and ze 'ealer, zey just vanished!"

"Disappeared?" Bagman repeated dumbly. Next to him, Karkaroff was scowling, but Dumbledore and Marcus Fleetwood both looked suitably concerned.

"Ze woman, she grabbed him and removed 'er _palme_ and pushed it at 'im and zey vanished."

"She removed her _hand_?" Bagman gasped.

" 'Palme' with an e," Fleetwood told the idiot. "It's French for flipper. A Portkey, by the sounds of it."

"Dumbledore," Severus said, hearing the urgency in his voice. Dumbledore heard it too.

"Severus, find Alastor. The two of you can find them."

"Moody? But, Dumbledore—"

"You don't know what you're going into," Dumbledore interrupted. "We already found one former Death Eater trying to take Harry; we have to assume the worst. Take Alastor."

There was no arguing. Severus turned away—

—and that's when the pain came, a familiar but long-unfelt burning sensation spearing through his left arm. He stumbled, grabbing at his arm, unable to keep down a gasp. He heard a similar noise of surprised pain from behind him, and looked around to see Karkaroff clutching his own arm, his face ashen and openly horrified.

Severus' eyes slid to Dumbledore, and knew the headmaster understood exactly what happened. On the far side of the table, Maxime, Delacour, and Pomfrey were giving Karkaroff and Severus confused looks, as was Bagman, but Fleetwood looked shrewd.

"Severus…" Dumbledore said, standing and closing the distance between them. His voice was harsh and his fingers tight when he grabbed Severus' wrist. "Are you ready to… are you prepared…?"

"Yes."

Dumbledore fingers tightened around his wrist. "Severus, be sure. Harry will be there. You must not give yourself away."

"I will not let him die, Albus," Severus hissed, wrenching himself free.

"But other than that…"

He took a step back. "I will do what I think best, for Harry and my position, but his life takes priority over all else."

He didn't wait to see if Dumbledore would argue. He glanced briefly at Karkaroff, but he was now hunched in his chair, clearly intending to stay, though he shook slightly like he wanted nothing more than to flee. Severus couldn't blame him; he faced an unpleasant death when Voldemort caught him.

Severus himself might face the same.

He spun and stalked away across the grounds. He wanted to run, but the rest of the spectators would have enough questions already, without seeing stoic Snape running for the castle.

When he reached the mostly empty castle, however, he broke into a sprint, tearing down staircases and corridors to his dungeon rooms. He skidded to a stop in his bedroom, dropping to the floor and pulling a box from beneath the bed. It opened to a few taps of his wand and he withdrew the mask inside, not taking the time to look at it. That box hadn't been opened in over a decade.

He ran back out again, not caring now if anyone saw him, and left the castle, heading for the school gates. He put on his mask just before he reached them, and as soon as he was beyond them, he Apparated, hoping he wouldn't arrive to find his son dead.

* * *

A steady ache grew in Harry's head as Voldemort examined himself, pressed the Dark Mark on the masked man's left arm, and then came to looked down into the tank. Harry glared up at him while Voldemort stared in like Harry was just some curious fish.

Harry was surprised at how little he was scared. Most of the fear he felt right then was that the gillyweed would wear off and he would drown, but he wasn't afraid of Voldemort. He'd defeated him twice before already, after all. Sure, last time Voldemort hadn't had his own body and he was probably more powerful now that he did, but Harry was powerful, too. If those runes disappeared, if Harry got free of them, then he could… do something.

He hesitated at murder. It was probably the best way to deal with Voldemort, but Harry didn't like to have yet another person's death on his hands. He could just Wish for those cuffs that Dumbledore had; he doubted Dumbledore had got rid of them after taking them off Harry. He could render Voldemort powerless, take his wand, and then… he wasn't sure what he'd do then.

Voldemort said something to Harry, but he still couldn't hear and he couldn't read lips, either—not that Voldemort had much of those, more of a slash across his face. Harry half expected his tongue to be forked.

Voldemort rose and stepped back, outside the circle of runes, and drew a wand from his pocket. He pointed it at the tank and it vanished, water spilling away and Harry dropping a few inches onto the floor. He gasped, choked, grabbed at his throat, then some of the water coiled around his neck, swirling around him like a living collar, covering his gills and letting him breathe while leaving the rest of him free.

More swirled around his wrists, pulling his hands behind him as he tried to scramble up. Despite being just water, it was as firm as any rope, keeping his hands secure behind his back. He still fought to escape the runes, but the water around his neck suddenly pulled him up. It was like someone put their hands around his neck and lifted him until his knees were a few inches off the floor. It was an awkward height, too high to rest on his knees but too low to get his feet under him.

"I think that's better," Voldemort said, his voice cold and hissing. "We can understand one another without you suffocating. Gillyweed, is it?"

Harry glared, not answering. Voldemort tutted, slowly circling Harry, staying beyond the runes.

"I expect an answer when I ask a question, Harry. I think you need a lesson in manners."

He was behind Harry now, and Harry finally felt some real fear. If he couldn't get free of the runes, if he couldn't get his wand, he was just as weak as anyone else. Powerless. The one thing that scared him more than anything, more even than drowning.

 _We have to get out,_ the voice said urgently. _You're due to die young enough, I don't want to go any earlier!_

Neither did Harry, but he couldn't even move right then.

Then Voldemort spoke again, just one word—

" _Crucio._ "

—and Harry's world exploded with pain.

* * *

When Severus appeared, his gaze went first to Voldemort. Even with the summons, he'd hoped it wasn't true, that there was some other explanation. But there he was, even more inhuman than he had been the last time Severus saw him.

And Harry—he lay at the centre of a two painted white circles, twitching as he came to the end of one of his seizures. Water circled his neck like a liquid collar, and through it Severus caught glimpses of gills; he was surprised Voldemort hadn't just left him to suffocate on the air. More water held his wrists behind him, there was vomit around his mouth, and a cut on his arm was steadily trickling blood.

Severus had to look away as he went forward, dropped to his hands and knees, and kissed the hem of Voldemort's robe. He always hated doing that, half expecting Voldemort to kick him in the face every time. He never did—such an action was probably beneath him—and Severus gladly backed up and took his place in the circle forming around Voldemort and Harry.

There were gaps, left by those in Azkaban, and Karkaroff and possibly one or two others that hadn't responded. Peter Pettigrew was huddled on the floor beside a cauldron, holding the bloody stump of an arm to his chest and sobbing. By another wall stood the healer who'd accompanied Harry into the lake—or rather, someone who looked like her. Presumably the dead woman on the floor was the real healer, and it was an imposter who'd snuck into the school.

Again. Would Harry never be safe within Hogwarts' walls? It was supposed to be secure yet time and again Harry came to harm. If he survived this—if they both survived—Severus was going to suggest Harry give up formal education. It wasn't like he needed it; maybe he'd be safer somewhere else.

Harry's seizure ended as the Death Eaters settled into place. Severus hoped he would recover quickly, for what little it would help. Harry's wand was discarded across the room, and Severus could guess what the runes painted on the floor were for.

"Welcome, Death Eaters," said Voldemort quietly. "Thirteen years… thirteen years since last we met. Yet you answer my call as though it was yesterday… we are still united under the Dark Mark, then! _Or are we?_ "

As Voldemort spoke further, chiding them for never coming to his aid, Severus fought to keep his emotions under control. If he didn't keep his thoughts and feelings carefully concealed, he would be killed. Eventually there was going to be a time when he had to explain himself to Voldemort—explain why he'd spent fourteen years snug in Hogwarts—and he had to be ready.

One of the Death Eaters threw himself down, spewing apologies. Severus didn't recognise the voice, but he wouldn't; the masks were enchanted to distort their voices for precisely that reason. He used to know who was behind the design of several of the masks—they were all unique—but it'd been so long that he'd forgotten.

"Get up, Avery," said Voldemort softly. "Stand up. You ask for forgiveness? I do not forgive. I do not forget. Thirteen long years… I want thirteen years' repayment before I forgive you. Wormtail here has paid some of his debt already, have you not, Wormtail?"

He looked down at Pettigrew, who continued to sob. What Severus wouldn't give to cut off his other hand…

Yet Voldemort did exactly the opposite, conjuring a gleaming silver appendage that attached itself to Pettigrew's bleeding stump.

There was a weak noise from Harry, then, something like laughter. Everyone's attention turned to him. Voldemort flicked his wand—Severus' hand clenched at his side—and Harry rose off the floor, lifted by the water swirling around his neck.

Dressed only in his swimshorts, Severus was made aware of just how pathetic Harry looked. There was really no other word to use. Severus had always known he was small—he was no taller than any of the girls in his class, even being a year older—but he looked even smaller right now. He wasn't so skinny as to be unhealthy, but he was thin, pale skin pulled taut over his ribs and hips as he hung there, knees inches off the floor.

There was an old scar across his abdomen, just a couple of inches on the left side, and Severus wondered what it was from before realising he already knew. The Muggle operation from his childhood, where they had to cut him open to stop his insides bleeding. Something Severus could have prevented if he'd been a better man.

"Do you find something amusing, Harry?" Voldemort asked. He stayed carefully outside the circle of runes.

"He wants to know if you include dental in your healthcare plan."

There was pregnant pause. What the hell was the boy doing? If this was some ruse, Severus couldn't imagine where he was going with it.

"You dare to mock Lord Voldemort?"

"Do you think it's a sign of madness?" Harry said, and then, while Severus was trying to figure out that non-sequitur, he added, "I think the voice in the head of a boy who hears voices has no place discussing the madness of others."

A boy who hears voice… that was news to Severus. Extremely worrying news. He really hoped it was just a ruse. It might not be a good one, but if Harry was really insane…

"Pettigrew did not mention your madness," Voldemort said quietly.

"It's a recent development," Harry said. He sounded so conversational, Severus wanted to shake him, to knock some sense into the boy. Maybe he really was mad to talk to Voldemort like that. "Are you—why not?"

Voldemort fingered his wand. "Why not what?" he asked dangerously.

Harry tilted his head back slightly and Severus was sure there was a glimpse of madness in his good eye as it fixed on Voldemort. "There's this voice inside my head. I've been hearing it for a while now, but I haven't told anyone. I didn't want them thinking I'm mad, you see, but I don't think it matters anymore. Anyway, he thinks if I ask you if you're going to kill me, then I'd be giving you ideas. I guess he forgot that you tried to kill me twice already. Three times if you include your diary."

Severus was glad he wasn't the only one whose breath hitched right then. The idea of Voldemort keeping a diary was enough to elicit a response that covered Severus'.

Harry looked around at them then back at Voldemort. "Should I not have mentioned that you kept a diary?"

Voldemort's wand came up so fast they heard it whip through the air. " _Crucio!_ "

It was a long time since Severus had seen someone under the Cruciatus Curse. He wondered if it was that which made Harry's screams seem so loud, rattling in his ears and burrowing through to his very bones. He didn't even think about what he was doing as he reached for his wand, he just knew that he could not stand by and listen to his son scream like that, no matter what it did for his position as a spy.

And then the door crashed open and the Assistant walked in.


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

Harry was on the floor again. Another seizure, by the feel of things, and a bad one at that. His whole body ached, like he'd exercised too hard for too long, except it was as deep as his bones and ran all the way from his toes to his head. He was hardly aware now of the sting in his arm from the cut.

There was blood and vomit in his mouth. He spat it out, felt half of it dribble down the side of his face, but at least it wasn't in his mouth any more. The post-seizure fuzziness was worse than ever, compounded by that ache and a persistent throbbing in his forehead.

He became aware of someone talking and opened his eyes, but he was lying on his right, so most of what he saw was the floor beneath him, stained by his own blood and puke.

"You will not help the boy!"

Voldemort. Harry forced his head around so he could see better. It made his head swim and he took a moment to focus. Voldemort stood with his back to Harry, facing—the Assistant? Where had he come from? Was he a Death Eater, too? He wasn't dressed like the rest—he had his familiar green cloak over Muggle jeans and a jumper—nor did he have a mask. His hands, hanging loosely by his sides, shook with a small tremor.

"I really wish you hadn't said that."

"Harry Evans will die today."

"Harry Evans will not," the Assistant retorted, then added as an afterthought, "Hopefully."

"I do not have time to deal with you. The hour of the second Triwizard task is almost past, and I must ensure our young friend is ready to return. Crabbe, Goyle, secure him."

Two large Death Eaters grabbed the Assistant by his arms, forcing him to his knees with a hand each on his shoulders. As Voldemort turned away from him, the Assistant lifted his head and looked across so his blue eyes meet Harry's gaze. For a brief moment one of them flashed green, then he bent over, groaning with pain.

 _Did he just wink at us?_

Harry didn't have time to wonder. He was hauled up again, hanging once more by the water around his neck, but this time he was lifted until his feet left the floor, putting his head on level with Voldemort's.

"It's a pity," Voldemort said. "I would liked to have drawn this out. I'd even have given you a chance to fight and prove yourself, but you are weak and diseased, and mad, too, it seems. If I'd have known earlier, I'd have ensured Ms Skeeter published that, too—yes, I engineered that," he said, seeing Harry's expression. "I wanted to make sure everyone knows exactly who you are when you die. But you would not be much of a opponent even if we had the time to fight."

There were chuckles from the watching Death Eaters. Harry wet his lips, felt the gills in his throat flutter as he took in air, and tried to sound stronger than he felt as he spoke.

"If you really thought I couldn't fight you, you wouldn't have put those runes on the floor to keep me powerless."

"Oh, is _that_ what they're meant to be for?" the Assistant said. "In that case, to prove my loyalty, my lord, I'd like to politely suggest you brush up on your ancient languages, because right now they say your mother fucked a donkey. I just sort of assumed you were making a statement about your father, but if they're meant to—"

"Silence!" Voldemort snapped, and the Assistant shut up.

 _Make a Wish!_

Harry did. He didn't know if the Assistant was telling the truth, but he had to take the chance.

As one, everyone in the room crumpled, unconscious, some of them hitting each other as they went down or falling over their neighbours. Only the Assistant remained in place; even the snake under the chair stopped slowly swaying its tail. Harry hit the floor as well, and the water around his wrists and neck splashed away, obeying the laws of gravity again. He choked on a breath, then Wished away the effects of the gillyweed, watching the webbing between his fingers disappear and feeling the gills seal smoothly into the flesh of his neck.

"Didn't kill them, I see," the Assistant said, taking his hand away from the neck of the nearest Death Eater.

"I'm not a murderer," Harry said, struggling to sit up again. He Wished for a robe and wrapped his arms around himself as it settled in place on his body, shivering. It was as much pain as it was cold. "You changed the runes, didn't you? They were right before."

"Why do you think I call myself the Assistant?"

The Assistant got to his feet and waved his hand, vanishing the marks on the floor then summoning Harry's wand and bringing it over. Harry took it with a shaking hand; the Assistant's own were steady now.

"You don't look so hot," the Assistant noted.

"I hurt. Everywhere. Head's killing me."

"Cruciatus Curse'll do that to you," the Assistant said. He crouched by Harry, looking him over with concern. "Not much I can do for that, I'm afraid. I wouldn't recommend Apparating in your state; you're liable to Splinch yourself. Given what Voldemort was saying, I'm guessing there's a Portkey somewhere here to send you back to Hogwarts. Directly to the lake, probably; expect he wanted to make it look like you drowned."

Harry shuddered, hugging himself tight. He never wanted to go in that lake ever again.

"No to that then. Alright. Well, what d'you want to do about this lot? Should put some chains or something on Voldemort if you're not going to kill him."

Harry looked around at them all. " _Should_ I kill him?"

"Thought you weren't a murderer," the Assistant said, without judgement.

"I know, but… it's Voldemort. If I don't kill him, he'll start another war, won't he?"

"Yes," the Assistant said slowly, "but he'll have a slow start of it. I never saw anything in the papers about him when the business with Crouch came out, so I'm guessing Fudge has his head in the sand, as usual. The worst of his Death Eaters are still in Azkaban, and he'd have to start over with recruiting new followers and dark creatures to the cause. Add to that he'll be a bit more wary this time around because of you—especially after this little stunt—and once you tell Dumbledore about it, he'll start establishing the resistance, so all in all things shouldn't be _too_ bad."

"How do you know all that?"

"I'm really, really clever."

There was obviously more to it than that, but Harry was too tired and hurting to push it. "But if I kill him…"

"Then he just goes back to being a wraith, but don't expect him to stay down for another decade."

Harry stared miserably at Voldemort's prone form. "Can't he die properly?"

"Not right now, and you're in no state to do what needs doing to make it so he can properly die."

"So I just leave them all here?"

The Assistant hummed, looking around at them. "Could do."

"Or…?"

The Assistant looked back at him. "They are Death Eaters. Send word of where you are and you could have the lot of them arrested."

"Even Voldemort?"

The Assistant chuckled. "Yeah, even him. Admittedly, he wouldn't stay locked up for long. He's a clever bastard, he'll be out eventually, but maybe locking him up for a little while is better than not at all."

"What do you think I should do?"

The Assistant shrugged. "Not up to me."

Harry sighed, but he didn't even have the energy to complain. He just wanted to get back to Hogwarts and sleep for a week.

He conjured chains that wrapped around Voldemort, arms pulled across his torso and hands behind his back as if he wore a straight jacket.

"Do you know where I am?" he asked. The Assistant was right about Apparating, even if Harry wasn't sure his brand of teleportation was exactly the same. He didn't want to risk leaving something behind, nor having to walk the distance from outside Hogwarts to the castle. Not to mention the explanations; would anyone even believe him if he staggered up to Hogwarts talking about Voldemort's resurrection?

"Riddle Manor, Little Hangleton, Yorkshire. You want to send the Patronus message or shall I?"

"You," Harry said, glad for the offer so he didn't have to admit he couldn't conjure a Patronus.

The Assistant did it without question, then conjured a plain blue cloak that he slung over Harry's shoulders. Harry tensed, half expecting an attack, then relaxed again instantly with an appreciative murmur. The cloak was enchanted warm and blissfully soft, and he gladly pulled it around himself.

"Hey, Harry, you consider letting a few of them go?"

Harry looked up. "Why?"

The Assistant moved over to one of the Death Eaters, turned them onto their back, and pulled off their mask.

It was Snape.

 _I'm not even surprised._

"Why should I let him go?"

The Assistant shrugged, replacing the mask. "He's a spy for Dumbledore. He won't be much use if he gets arrested and thrown in Azkaban. Problem is, if you only let him go, it'll basically be a great big giveaway to Voldemort, and he'll kill Severus when he inevitably escapes."

"Are there other spies?" Harry asked, looking around at the other Death Eaters.

"No, but I can point out a few who are less of a danger to the general populace than the rest. Ones that are likely to just slip back into their lives like they did before."

 _We shouldn't let any of them go just to save Snape. You don't even like him._

He wouldn't say he disliked him anymore, either. He was still mad about Snape's actions during his childhood, but with Voldemort returned to life, he couldn't let his own past get in the way of future help. If Dumbledore was going to fight Voldemort, he would need a spy.

He looked to the Assistant. "Which ones?"

The Assistant pointed out five. Harry Wished them awake.

"The Aurors are on the way," he said as they got to their feet. "If you want to avoid Azkaban, leave now."

"Why us?" asked Snape. His voice was so distorted as to be unrecognisable; Harry never would have guessed it was him if the Assistant hadn't shown him.

"Because," Harry sighed. "Just go. Or don't. Get arrested for all I care."

"If we leave, the Dark Lord will punish us as traitors," warned one of the others. Their voice was distorted, too. "If we kill him now, we'll be rewarded beyond our wildest dreams."

"By all means," Snape drawled. "You go first."

The other one hesitated. "I thought we'd all attack together."

"Do you think we'd lay a hand on him?" asked another, standing near the fake Amy, who was also unconscious. "You saw what he just did."

The one who'd spoken against Harry looked around at the Assistant. "I thought that was you."

"Nope," the Assistant said, grinning. "All Harry. I'm just here to watch, don't mind me."

" _I_ have no intention of going to Azkaban," said the one near fake Amy, then he dropped to a crouch, grabbed her, and disappeared with a crack.

Three others quickly followed suit, and then the one who'd spoken against Harry, until only Snape was left behind.

"Won't be a very good spy if you're in Azkaban," Harry said.

"What makes you think I'm a spy?"

Harry nodded at the Assistant, who now stood by a window, peering around the curtains. "He said so. He showed me who you are."

Snape twitched, and then, slowly, reached up and removed his mask. He watched Harry, apparently looking for a reaction, then gestured at the Assistant. "You trust him?"

His voice was no longer distorted.

"He saved my life. Those runes were right before. He changed them."

"I'll stay with him, but you should go, Severus," the Assistant said, not looking around. "Whole load of Aurors have just arrived. They'll have anti-Apparition spells up soon."

Snape frowned at him, and asked Harry, "Are you sure you're alright to stay with him?"

Harry nodded. He wouldn't say he trusted the Assistant, but twice now he'd indirectly worked against Voldemort. It'd have been nice if he turned up to interfere a bit earlier today, but at least he'd saved Harry's life. He had to be grateful for that, and he believed the man wouldn't hurt him. As questionable as some of his actions were, on the whole Harry thought the Assistant opposed Voldemort, though he wasn't entirely sure that put him on their side instead.

Snape glanced doubtfully once more at the Assistant, then vanished.

Harry closed his eyes and tugged the cloak tighter. The enchanted warmth didn't soothe the ache still in his bones, but he felt better for the heat anyway.

"Why did you say the man who killed Amy could go?" he asked.

"Did I?"

"He took away the pretender."

"Oh, well, you've no guarantee either of them actually killed her. It could have been Voldemort who did it. The Aurors are almost here. I'll go when they get inside."

Harry nodded. "One day you'll tell me the truth about how you always know things, won't you?"

He could hear the smile in the Assistant's answer. "Sure, one day."

Nearby, a door crashed. Harry flinched, eyes flying open and head twisting towards the sound, then grimaced as the sharp movement aggravated his aches. He had to shut his eyes against a wave of dizziness, and by the time it passed, he opened his eyes just in time to see the Assistant disappear, the unconscious snake slung around his neck like a scarf.

People spilled into the room, wands out and yelling for surrender. Harry shrunk back from the noise, and then Sirius was there, pushing past the others and stepping on Death Eaters as he rushed to Harry. He dropped down in front of him, grabbing Harry's shoulders, eyes wide with concern.

"Harry, are you alright?"

Harry looked up at him blearily, not caring about the other people crowding the room, the confused questions about the Death Eaters and the shocked cries at the sight of Voldemort.

"Can I go home now?"

Sirius smiled weakly. "Yeah, kid, you can go home now."

"Great," Harry mumbled, and passed out.

* * *

Harry woke once, briefly, to the sight of Kirith and Madam Pomfrey standing over him. They asked him some questions he quickly forgot, and when Pomfrey gave him a potion he quickly and gladly fell back into unconsciousness.

Next time he woke, it was more fully. He was still sore, but his head was no longer throbbing. His robe was gone, leaving him dressed in hospital pyjamas, but there was fading sunlight outside the windows of the hospital wing. The curtains were pulled around his bed and Sirius stood by them, peering out. Some kind of commotion was going on in the ward; Harry could hear a cat screeching and Pomfrey telling someone to calm down.

"What's going on?"

Sirius jumped and looked around, smiling. "You're awake. Oh, some kid just came in with his head transfigured into a cat's. How are you feeling?"

Harry sat up, grimacing. "Still sore, but better."

Sirius sat in a chair by the bed. "Snape said you were under the Cruciatus for a minute."

"Twice, I think," Harry said, frowning as he tried to remember.

"You _think_?"

"I had a couple of seizures," Harry said defensively. "I don't really remember what happened before them."

Sirius frowned worriedly at that, but he didn't ask any more about what happened.

"Dumbledore will want to hear it," he said when Harry mentioned it. "There's no need for you to tell it twice. We got most of the details from Snape, anyway. I'm surprised you didn't let him get carted off with the rest. Remus reckons you don't much like him."

"Dumbledore needs him to spy."

Sirius folded his arms over his chest, leaning back in his chair. "Not really. Voldemort's locked away."

"In Azkaban?"

Sirius shook his head. "The Ministry lot decided it wasn't a good idea to lock him up with all his followers. Last I heard, Marcus Fleetwood was trying to get permission to hold him in the Department of Mysteries. I think they want to experiment on him."

The commotion on the ward had settled down, so Harry was able to hear the doors open. He listened to footsteps cross the floor, pause briefly and the murmur of voices, then they started again, approaching his bed. He watched a shadow grow clearer against the curtain, then it rustled and moved aside, revealing Dumbledore.

He smiled at seeing Harry awake. "Good evening. I'm glad to see you awake, Mr Evans. How are you feeling?"

"Okay."

"Has Madam Pomfrey seen to you yet?"

"No, she's a bit busy, apparently."

"Yes, I saw. I expect she'll be over once Mr Stone is back to normal. In the meantime, would you mind if we had a chat?"

Harry shook his head and Dumbledore conjured himself a chair. Harry explained everything that happened, giving as many details as he could remember when Dumbledore pushed for them. Snape had already told what he saw, explaining the Assistant's loud arrival, which had distracted Voldemort from torturing Harry, so only whatever happened in the minute or so between Harry leaving the tank of water and the first seizure remained unknown.

The only thing Harry didn't mention was the voice. Dumbledore never brought it up, so Harry had to assume Snape hadn't mentioned it either. He was grateful, but suspicious as to why.

When he finished telling his side of things, he asked, "Is the Department of Mysteries really going to experiment on Voldemort?"

Dumbledore gave Sirius an exasperated look, which Sirius pretended not to notice. "They are holding him secure. I believe Marcus Fleetwood seeks to find out how he survived all this time, but he won't be a lab rat."

"Pity," Sirius muttered.

"Did I do the wrong thing, not killing him?" Harry asked, half afraid of the answer.

 _I certainly think so. We're top of his hit list; leaving him alive is begging to get killed._

"No," Dumbledore said firmly. "You are far too young to have murder on your conscience."

"The Assistant said even if I did kill him, he would've just become a wraith again. Is that true?"

"It is possible," Dumbledore said thoughtfully. "I cannot be certain, but perhaps Marcus and his people will find out. What else did the Assistant say to you?"

"Only that Voldemort will probably escape and he'll have a slow start trying to begin another war because he needs to recruit people, and he'll be wary of me."

Sirius sat up straighter. "He _will_ escape? He said that for sure?"

Harry nodded. "He said the Ministry would never be able to hold Voldemort permanently."

"The bastard's probably going to help him out himself," Sirius growled, thumping a fist against the bed. "Just like with Wormtail—helping us then helping them."

"We cannot be sure of that," Dumbledore said, and Sirius shot him a sceptical look. "Severus said he was dismissive of Voldemort, and he saved Harry's life."

Sirius muttered something Harry didn't catch, but Dumbledore gave him a stern look.

"I trust Severus, Sirius, just as I trust you. This is no time for petty rivalries. Whether aided by the Assistant or not, Voldemort may escape the Ministry, and we must be prepared to fight him if that day comes."

* * *

Sirius left after Pomfrey checked Harry over and declared him recovering well. He had to stay in the Hospital Wing overnight, but he had no objection to that. He was still sore and a little tired, and he didn't look forward to facing the rest of the school just yet.

Pomfrey brought him dinner, and afterwards his friends came to visit—Hermione, Neville, Ginny, Cid, and Tyler, and Alex came over from the other bed. His head was mostly back to normal, except his ears were still pointy and fluffy, and there was a fine fuzz over his face.

Harry had asked Sirius what story was going around about what happened, so he could be prepared. The Ministry had taken credit for the arrests, saying they'd saved Harry. The only thing they gave Harry credit for was the one thing he hadn't actually done: sending the message for help. Harry didn't mind; at least he didn't have to explain to anyone how he'd overwhelmed Voldemort and a dozen Death Eaters.

"Glad you're not dead," Cid said, claiming the chair Sirius had been using. Ginny took the other one, Hermione, Neville, and Tyler fetched chairs from other beds, and Alex climbed on the end of Harry's bed.

"It's true then?" Ginny asked. "You Know Who is really back?"

Harry just nodded. Ginny shivered.

"Hey, he's captured, right?" Cid said. "Locked away in the depths of the Ministry. They've got some really nasty things down there, so we've got nothing to worry about."

"Right," Harry said, but the others didn't look reassured.

Tyler forced a grin, trying to lighten the mood. "I guess I can't complain about you abandoning me at the bottom of the lake then."

Harry gave him a baffled look. "What are you on about?"

"I was your hostage."

"My…?" Understanding dawned. " 'The thing I'd miss the most'? That was you?"

There were snorts and snickers of laughter.

"You were hoping for someone else?" Tyler asked with feigned hurt.

"I didn't realise it meant people," Harry explained. "The clue didn't specify."

" _I'm_ hurt that you wouldn't miss me the most," Cid said unconvincingly.

Tyler left his chair and dropped onto Cid's lap, throwing both arms around his neck and planting a sloppy kiss on his cheek.

"I'd miss you the most!"

"At least someone would," Cid sighed, "but what the fuck is your arse made of, titanium? Get the fuck off me."

"I'm quite comfortable here actually, I think I'll stay."

Cid gave him a shove, sending Tyler sprawling on the floor.

"Bully," Tyler grumbled, returning to his own chair.

"What happened with the Tournament, anyway?" Harry asked. "I forgot to ask Dumbledore and Sirius."

"It's still going on," Hermione answered.

"The judges decided to award all of you twenty-five points for the second task," Neville added, "for fairness."

"The other champions are happy with that?" Harry asked, surprised.

"Cedric is," Alex said. "Some of the other Hufflepuffs complained because he was first back so he should have got the most points, but he said if anyone deserves the most points its you because beating You Know Who is a lot more impressive than rescuing someone from mermaids."

"Viktor's the same," Hermione said. "Who knows what Fleur thinks, but I heard Madame Maxime suggesting you redo the task."

"God, no!" Harry burst out. "I'm not going in that lake again, not for anything."

Tyler put a hand to his head and pretended to swoon. "He hates me! You'd really just leave me to drown?"

Harry reached over to grab his shoulder, looking him sincerely in the eye. "Tyler, you're my friend, but yes, I would absolutely leave you to drown."

"That's really nice, thanks, Harry," Tyler replied dryly while the others laughed.

"Sorry," Harry said, sitting back again. "I just really, really hate swimming."

"How can you hate swimming?" Ginny asked. "I love swimming. We've got a pond in our orchard at home and it's always really warm in the summer. You should come swim there some time, I'm sure it's much nicer than the lake."

Harry shuddered. "No thanks."

"You really hate it that much?" Ginny asked, looking surprised.

He shrugged, then admitted, "I didn't know how to swim until this year. I only learned for the task, and that didn't exactly leave a good impression."

Ginny looked gobsmacked. "You never learnt to swim as a kid?"

Harry shook his head, unwilling to go into the reasons why. It might be public knowledge that his uncle used to hit him, but that didn't mean he wanted to talk about life with the Dursleys.

"So who taught you?" Cid asked. "Is that where you snuck off every Sunday before the task?"

"Yeah, and I can't say. Sworn to secrecy."

That got him curious looks and they pressed him, trying to find out who it was, but he kept his silence until Madam Pomfrey kicked them out, saying Harry and Alex needed rest. Harry said his goodbyes, but when Pomfrey had returned to her office, he Wished for a pack of cards and went over to Alex's bed.

"Want to play?" he asked. "I'm not tired yet."

"Alright," Alex agreed, and Harry climbed on the end of the bed.

"So who hexed you?" Harry asked once they started a game of exploding snap.

The fuzz covering Alex's face wasn't thick or dark enough to hide his blush, and he didn't look up as he laid down a card. "Just an older kid."

"What older kid? Is someone picking on you again?"

"Everyone's always picking on me. I'm a loser."

"I don't think so," Harry said, not exactly lying. Alex was nice enough, but a bit wet and not someone Harry would seek out for company. "Neither does Tyler."

 _I do,_ the voice said. Harry ignored it.

Alex didn't look comforted. "I am though. I'm always the last to learn spells, I barely pass my exams, and no one ever wants to hang out with me."

"Tyler does. And that guy asked you to the Yule Ball," Harry pointed out. Alex hunched his shoulders, face reddening further. "Wait—is that who hexed you?"

"Yes," Alex mumbled.

"Did you tell Madam Pomfrey? What about Professor Sprout?" Harry asked when Alex shook his head. "Why not?"

Alex shrugged.

"You shouldn't let him get away with it."

"They'll all ask why he hexed me though," Alex said miserably.

"So?"

"So it's embarrassing!"

Harry frowned, the game forgotten. "Why is it embarrassing? He's a bully, that's not your fault. They can make him stop."

Alex squirmed. He still hadn't looked up, fiddling with his cards. "It's not just that. He…"

"What?"

Alex glanced towards Madam Pomfrey's office, then muttered, "He hexed me because I wouldn't have sex with him."

Harry's jaw dropped.

"I told you I'm a loser," Alex said, throwing down his cards and making to turn over and bury his face in the pillow. Harry grabbed his arm, pulling him back.

"That doesn't make you a loser."

"Then why do you look so shocked?" Alex asked accusingly.

"Because I can't believe he hexed you for _that_."

"You don't think I should have just done it?"

" _No!_ " Harry didn't mean to sound so horrified. Cid talked about sex all the time, and Tyler certainly seemed interested enough in it, but Harry could empathise with not wanting to do it and didn't like the suggestion that he thought they all should.

Harry's own interest in sex was… complicated. He never felt any desire to do it, nor any of the other things Cid liked to talk about, but he'd had his fair share of wet dreams. He wasn't sure if he was just a late developer, or if there was more to it. He also had too much going on in the rest of his life to worry much about it.

Alex looked doubtful. "You don't think I'm a pussy for not wanting to have sex until I'm married?"

"A… is that why he turned your head into a cat?"

Alex nodded. Harry shook his head.

"I don't think that. I don't think there's anything wrong with not having sex until you want it. We're only third years, anyway."

"Tyler's had sex."

"Really?"

Alex nodded, settling back on the bed and picking up his cards again. "Remember that Muggle girl who lives next to me?"

"Charlie? But I thought she didn't talk to you guys anymore because she's going out with that Muggle boy?"

"They broke up. Johnny cheated on her with another girl from his school, and Tyler and Charlie got together during the week before the Quidditch World Cup. He told me about it when I got back."

"He never mentioned it to me or Cid," Harry said, but realised he shouldn't be surprised. Tyler talked about things when Cid brought the subject up, but he never started a conversation and he rarely actually talked about what he'd done with other people, though Harry had a feeling it was a lot.

Alex could only shrug, but he gave Harry a hopeful look. "You really don't think I'm stupid for not wanting to do it?"

"Yes. I don't want to do it either."

To his surprise, Alex beamed at him. "Thanks!"

"For what?"

"You're older than I am, and you're the Boy Who Lived. If _you_ don't want to have sex, then it really is okay for someone like me to not want to."

Harry didn't see the logic of that, but if it made Alex feel better then he wouldn't question it.

* * *

By morning, Harry was feeling better. There was still a slight ache in him when he moved, but he felt up to going to classes and Madam Pomfrey reluctantly agreed to it, but told him to come back if he felt unwell at all.

Going back to lessons was weird. Harry had seen Voldemort resurrected, been tortured and almost died, and then neutralised Voldemort and a dozen Death Eaters. Yet here he was going to lessons as if everything was normal—as if _he_ was normal. It really hit him for the first time just how unnecessary all this was for him.

But he wouldn't give it up. He did it precisely because he wanted to act like he was normal. He loved Hogwarts and he didn't want to give up his friends.

 _You're wasting your potential,_ the voice said bitterly. _And your time. You have so little of it left; why waste it in this castle, just for the company of a few brats?_

Harry ignored it. He remembered too well what it was like to be alone and friendless. He didn't want to go back to that.

He had Potions before lunch, and Snape asked him to stay behind after. Once the rest of the class had cleared out, Harry went up to the front desk where Snape was collecting their homework into a pile.

Snape got straight to the point. "Would you mind taking lunch in my office? I'd like to speak with you."

Harry had expected this conversation eventually, and nodded. It got him out of being stared at and pestered by the rest of the students wanting to know what happened to him.

 _Are you sure you want to eat with him?_ the voice asked as they headed from the classroom to Snape's office. _He's a Death Eater and a potion master. He could poison you and make it look like an accident._

Harry bit his lip to keep from answering, but couldn't help sighing. That voice was beginning to get annoying.

Snape glanced back at him, but didn't say anything until they reached the office. He put the pile of homework on one side of the desk, and summoned a house elf who brought them a tray of sandwiches and a jug of pumpkin juice. As Harry helped himself to a tuna, Snape sat across from him.

"I would like to thank you for not leaving me for Azkaban."

Harry shrugged. "You can't spy very well in there, unless Dumbledore needs to know about the Dementors."

"Is…" Snape began, then stopped. He poured himself a goblet of pumpkin juice and took a swig before saying, "Regardless, you have my thanks. But why did you let the others go?"

"It would be a big giveaway to Voldemort if only you got away."

"I guessed that much, but why those ones specifically?"

Harry took another sandwich. "The Assistant said they were less dangerous to the public than the others. I don't even know who they were. I don't know who the ones arrested are, either. I haven't seen a newspaper yet; did they name them?"

Yes." Snape paused. "Several of your schoolmates' parents were among them."

Harry looked up from picking cucumber out of his sandwich. "Who?"

Snape listed several names, most of which were just vague faces Harry knew around the school, mostly Slytherin. It did include Parkinson and Nott, Slytherins in the year above him, and Hayes, who was a Gryffindor in his year, but—"Not Malfoy?"

"No."

"Sirius said Mr Malfoy was one. Do you think he was one of the ones I let go, or was Sirius wrong?"

"I think you'll find he was the one who took that woman pretending to be the healer," Snape said, and then: "Harry."

"What?"

Snape glanced down. Harry looked and found his sandwich clenched in his fist, dripping globs of tuna onto his robes. He vanished it all.

"I didn't know he'd take her," he said, still staring at his lap. "I wouldn't have let him go otherwise. The Assistant said Voldemort might have killed the real healer, but that might not be true. They should pay for killing her."

"And kidnapping you."

Harry shrugged. "I guess, but at least I'm alive."

"Barely," Snape snapped. "You were moments from being killed!"

Harry looked up. "Would you have tried to stop him? Or let him kill me like you let him torture me?"

He was surprised at the anger he felt. Until now, he hadn't even considered the fact that Snape had stood and watched him get tortured. The fact that he couldn't actually remember being under the Cruciatus Curse made it less traumatic than it probably should be, but that didn't make the curse any less awful.

And after walking all the way to Slytherin for his books this morning, then back to the second floor for Charms, up to the sixth for History, and then down again for Potions, he was feeling the ache all the way down to his bones. Knowing the actual curse would have been a hundred times worse, he was suddenly furious that Snape had stood by and watched that.

Snape grimaced, looking away. "I would have stopped that," he said softly. "I intended to, until the Assistant burst into the room."

"Just left me for someone else to save, then, just like before."

Shock and hurt flashed across Snape's face before he could hide it. His voice was harder when he said, "I would have done it even then, but it wasn't necessary. The Assistant's entrance distracted the Dark Lord from you."

Harry just shrugged.

"I'd have outed myself as a spy to save you, Harry."

"I guess it's lucky you didn't have to," Harry said. "Are we done? I need to get my books for afternoon classes."

"No. I want to know about this voice in your head. Don't lie to me, either," Snape said when Harry was thinking of doing just that. "You were in no state to create such a convincing ruse yesterday morning."

He frowned suddenly. Harry understood why; he could barely believe everything that happened had been just yesterday morning.

"Should you be out of the hospital wing so soon?"

"I'm fine," Harry lied. Actually, he regretted his decision to convince Pomfrey to let him out this morning and was serious considering skiving afternoon classes. He didn't fancy walking all the way out to the greenhouses.

"And the voice?"

"It's nothing."

 _I object to that. Not that I want you telling him about me, but I object to being called nothing._

"You have a voice inside your head," Snape said. "That is not 'nothing'."

"It's just my thoughts being vocal."

"You asked the Dark Lord about _healthcare!_ "

Harry stared at him, surprised by the uncharacteristic outburst. Snape pinched the bridge of his nose and took a deep breath, then dropped his hand.

"I want you to see a psychologist."

 _No!_ the voice yelled, and Harry echoed it, adding, "I don't need to see a psychologist."

"You are ill—"

"I'm fine!" Harry snapped, standing and grabbing his bag off the floor. "If there was anything else wrong with me, Kirith would have found it at Christmas, or yesterday when she checked me."

Snape stood as well, planting both hands on the desk and half leaning across it. "Kirith isn't a psychologist. You need help."

"I _don't_ ," Harry snarled, "and if you tell anyone about this, I'll tell them you were there yesterday, and I'll make sure they all believe it so you can go rot in Azkaban with the rest of the Death Eaters."

He didn't wait for a response, just spun about and stormed out the office.

* * *

"You'd better be worth it," Harry muttered as he headed to Slytherin. "Or I _will_ go to a psychologist."

 _You don't want to do that,_ the voice replied smugly. _But fear not, I appreciate you standing up for me. I won't be a bother._

Harry certainly hoped so.

He passed through the Slytherin common room with hardly a glance at the other students, went straight to his dorm, and collapsed face first on his bed. He Wished his shoes untied so he could toe them off then shifted into a better position and Wished his curtains to close themselves, intending to take a nap.

He heard the door open, but ignored it. Orion and Stuart rarely bothered to talk to him, and Tyler and Cid wouldn't bother him when they saw his curtains closed.

Except the curtains did part, shining light into the darkness. Knowing it would be Cid rather than Tyler, Harry just buried his face in the pillow and muttered, "Piss off."

Hands grabbed him and pulled him off the bed. He yelped in surprise, grunted when he hit the floor, and looked up to find Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle, and Pansy Parkinson standing over him. He didn't need to ask what was going on; he could see the violence in their faces, that same vicious look that his uncle used to have.

If they'd gone straight to hitting him, attacking before he realised what was happening, they might have had a chance, but the boys waited to draw back their fists so Pansy could say, "My uncle's in prison because of you. You're going to pay for that, Evans."

Crabbe and Goyle both threw a punch, but at a Wish their fists turned aside and hit each other. Harry heard the crack of bones breaking and both boys howled with pain. He scrambled to his feet as they staggered away, clutching their fists, and drew his wand in case they tried anything else. They might overlook one bit of wandless magic but they'd notice more.

Logan Sparrow appeared in the still open door, prefect badge gleaming on his chest.

"What's going on in here? Parkinson, you shouldn't even be here."

"He attacked us!" Goyle said immediately.

"I did not! You tried to hit me, it's not my fault you can't even punch straight."

"He's lying," Pansy insisted. "We didn't do anything to him."

"Then why are you in his dorm?" Logan asked. When the three couldn't come up with a good answer, he nodded and stepped aside. "I thought so. Get out, and if I catch you in the boys' dorms again, Parkinson, I'll report you to Snape."

"I'll get you," Pansy whispered menacingly as they passed.

"You'll try," Harry replied, but really didn't look forward to having to defend himself from vengeful students.

"You alright?" Logan asked, and left when Harry nodded. Harry stowed his wand and went to shut the still open door, only for Malfoy to slip inside just before he could.

Harry reached for his wand again. "What do you want?"

"What did you do to Vince and Greg?"

"Nothing they didn't deserve. I'll do the same to you if you try anything, and you can tell Parkinson that if she comes after me again I'll hex her hands to her kneecaps."

"I'll put the word out," Malfoy agreed, and at Harry's doubtful look added, "People listen to me, and I know it's not your fault. I don't even have reason to hold a grudge; _my_ father wasn't arrested."

"Doesn't mean he wasn't there. Some of them got away."

Malfoy frowned. "The papers didn't say that."

Harry snorted. "They wouldn't. The Ministry isn't going to admit they let some get away, are they?"

"Did you see my father there?"

"No," Harry admitted, "but that doesn't mean he wasn't. You practically admitted last summer that he was a Death Eater."

Malfoy shifted uncomfortably, looking away. "It doesn't matter now anyway. You Know Who is locked away. If there are any Death Eaters left free—"

"There are."

"—then they're not a problem," Malfoy finished, ignoring Harry's comment.

"Until they try to break out their master."

Malfoy shot him a dark look. "You don't know that'll happen."

Harry shrugged. "What do you want, Malfoy? I've got things to do."

"I wanted to see how you were doing after yesterday, but if you don't want my sympathy—"

"I don't."

"Fine," Malfoy said coolly, and stalked off. "I was just trying to be nice."

Harry sighed, shut the door, and returned to his bed. Screw afternoon classes, he couldn't be bothered to walk anywhere else or deal with more people. He'd take the loss of points or detention or whatever Sprout decided to punish him with. His afternoon was better spent sleeping.


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

Several weeks later, the Easter holidays were upon them, which meant Harry was finally getting his prosthetic eye—or rather, eyes. Kirith had sent him a booklet of all the available options and he was enamoured with a magical eye that would let him look through things, like Moody's. His wouldn't be as obnoxious, however; Moody's was old and prosthetics had since advanced so Harry's eye would be the same size as his normal one, though it would still be an electric blue. However, he would be required to have a prosthetic that only let him see normally for when he finally sat his OWLs and NEWTs, and for the third Triwizard task, to ensure he didn't cheat at all.

He also had to sit, squirming with embarrassment the entire time, through a lecture from Snape on appropriate behaviour when he had a magical eye, and that if he used it for spying on people then he'd be forbidden from wearing it at school. Harry had absolutely no intention of using his eye for anything that Snape implied, despite Cid's vulgar suggestions about what he would do if he could see through walls. Not because he didn't want to, but because he kind of did and he felt guilty enough just thinking about it.

He went to Black Stag House for the whole break, his first time spending the Easter holiday away from Hogwarts, and on 7th April Sirius went with him to Saint Mungo's.

"Ready, kid?" Sirius asked him.

"Yeah," he said nervously.

Kirith met them and introduced Harry to another neuro-healer, William Gibbs, and they described the procedure to him. He'd be given a Calming Draught and a Pain Suppressant and then they'd remove his left eye and fit the prosthetic. Once they were the right size, Gibbs would work on making the nerves and connecting them to the two prosthetics, while Kirith sat to speak with Harry and conduct small tests to make sure that the new nerves didn't interfere with any other parts of his brain, and to be on guard for a seizure.

"It's not half as scary as it sounds," Kirith assured him. "We've done this plenty of times before with absolutely no trouble. You'll be back at Hogwarts next term and disgusting your friends by taking your eyes out at the dinner table."

Sirius couldn't be in the room with him, but he sat with Harry until the Calming Draught went into effect and then Kirith led him into the operating room. He sat in an operating chair, took the Pain Suppressant, and watched with a vague sort of curiosity as they prepared to work, and when Kirith checked his pain tolerance five minutes later, he felt nothing.

"Let's get started then."

It was strange to have Gibbs working on the edge of his vision, to know he was pulling out Harry's eye but not feel anything. He got to see the removed eyeball, which was more gross than he'd thought, and then Gibbs inserted the first prosthetic. It took only a few spells to mould it to the correct size and shape then he repeated the procedure with the second prosthetic.

Once that was done, Gibbs moved to the side and began work on building the nerves—a long, complicated spell that had Gibbs tapping and sliding his wand against Harry's head and face. Harry got occasional flashes of colour or random images in his vision, but they said that was normal, and through the whole procedure the voice remained completely silent, for which he was grateful.

"Okay, you're going to get a lot more flashing images now," Gibbs told him when they were about to cast the spell creating a connection between his new nerves and the prosthetics, "but it'll be of the room. You're going to see doubles and it might be disorientating, but it shouldn't last long. We've done the hardest part now. So you ready?"

"Yeah."

They did the normal prosthetic first. He saw four of everything as Gibbs chanted the spell and it took a few minutes to fade to normal when the man was finished. Kirith did a complete eye exam afterwards, getting him to read a short extract, identify pictures, and checking his peripheral vision. The entire room seemed much bigger now and Harry wondered how much of the world he missed by only having one working eye, wondered how many things happened on his left that he never noticed.

When Kirith and Gibbs were satisfied it was working fine, Gibbs popped the eye out and put it in a little pot filled with a special potion to keep it clean, then put in the magical eye. The spell connecting the nerves for that one was longer and the disorientation worse, images coming to Harry not just of the room but of things outside it. He saw people walking along corridors, almost like coloured ghosts, and looking at Kirith was incredibly disturbing. He could see the woman, but also see through her clothes, and through _her_ to the wall beyond, though that was far as the x-ray vision went; the magic only allowed him to look through so many layers. It took longer for the double vision to fade that time and the test afterwards took longer as Kirith checked his range of extra vision. When Harry had to look at her or Gibbs, he kept his gaze fixed firmly on their faces, which Kirith noticed.

"You'll quickly learn to control what you see," she told him, and Harry felt his face flush red. "It's not difficult and the novelty of it will wear off soon enough. You should find a comfortable level that will become the norm, and then you just concentrate to increase or decrease your field of vision."

Although the procedure went fine and by dinner he was perfectly ready to go home, they wanted to keep him in overnight. Kirith thought the stress of the procedure might trigger a seizure and they wanted to make sure it didn't affect the newly created nerves if he did.

"So how does it feel?" Sirius asked him when he was set up on a bed in the ward.

"Weird," Harry answered honestly. He still had the magical eye in; he wanted to get used to it as much as possible before he returned home and then to Hogwarts.

"But you're happy with it?"

 _Absolutely,_ purred the voice in his head, spoiling Harry's hope that it had gone away for good. _This extra vision is remarkable. I expect it to come in use a great deal._

"Definitely," Harry said aloud. Sirius grinned, watching the false eye spin in its socket. Harry found it simultaneously fascinating and disturbing to look through his own head.

"Shame you couldn't get that one green as well," Sirius remarked as the eye looked forward again, showing the electric blue iris. His non-magical prosthetic, however, was almost the exact same shade of green as his right eye and only someone looking closely would be able to tell it was fake when it was in.

Sirius went home later, saying he'd be back in the morning to pick him up. Harry seized during the night without ever waking up and Kirith did an MEEG to check on him afterwards. When it came out normal, she took him through the process of removing and inserting the prosthetics, gave him a leaflet on proper eye care, and then declared him free to go.

He still had to concentrate to not look through people's clothes and kept his eye rolled down at the floor as he and Sirius moved through the hospital to the floo points. When he got home, he made the mistake of looking at Remus and caught a disturbing glimpse of flesh before hurriedly turning his gaze away.

He had it figured out a week and a half later when he returned to Hogwarts. He was instantly the centre of attention at dinner with people asking how it felt, what he could see, and dire threats about what they'd do if anyone thought he was looking through their clothes or into the bathrooms and dorms when they were changing. He assured them vigorously that he'd do no such thing and obliged when they wanted to see him take it out, drawing disgusted noises from a few of them.

 _Clothes, bathrooms… they're all so obsessed with their bodies. There are so many more things we can use this for; who cares about their bodily privacy?_

Harry ignored it. The voice had already made several suggestions on what he could do, but he was uninclined to break into the Ministry and spy on people there. At least he had some desire to see naked people, even if he wouldn't act on it. He felt too guilty at the thought, but at the same time glad that he had _some_ sort of sexual desire. He still didn't feel inclined to get himself a girlfriend or do anything with the people he'd look at, but at least he didn't appear to be completely defective in that department.

* * *

News must have been slow following the Easter holiday because a week after school resumed, Rita Skeeter published an article gossiping about Harry. Somehow, to his great embarrassment, she found out he'd only recently learnt to swim from a 'mysterious tutor', but as shocking as her theory on his tutor was, the article took a far worse turn towards the end.

 _This journalist theorises that he may be seeking help from none other than Marcus Fleetwood, Head of the Department of Mysteries at the Ministry of Magic, and one of the judges in the Triwizard Tournament since the arrest of Bartemius Crouch._

 _Mr Fleetwood was not available for comment, but his adopted son, Tyler Lyle, is a close friend of Harry Evans, who once spent an entire Christmas break at their home. It leaves young Mr Evans well placed to seek aid from Marcus Fleetwood._

 _As well as physical training, it's safe to say Evans is receiving specialist magical training, too. Orion Devaux, a fellow housemate of Evans and Lyle, revealed that Evans spent several weekends receiving private tutelage from Bartimeaus Crouch Junior during his brief time disguised as Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody._

 _Such aid is forbidden under the rules of the Triwizard Tournament, but no penalty has been forthcoming for the Boy Who Lived, who is obviously using his fame to any advantage he can._

 _Worse still, what awful things might this Death Eater in disguise have taught him? Should we be questioning just what role Harry Evans played in the events of 24th February, which led to the arrest of thirteen Death Eaters and He Who Must Not Be Named?_

"That's really not fair," Tyler said when he, Harry, and Cid read the _Daily Prophet_ article during History of Magic one afternoon. "Marcus never teaches me anything special."

"He hasn't taught me anything!" Harry hissed, far more concerned that people would take her last sentence at face value. That was just what he needed—everyone thinking he'd willing helped in the resurrection of Voldemort. He could only be glad the details of the resurrection had never been released.

"Forget it, it's just Skeeter making up crap. Next thing you know she'll be saying we're secretly brothers or something."

"Lovers," Cid suggested from Tyler's other side. He was constructing a maze from his rolled up lengths of parchment and trying to make a beetle go through it, but it kept flying over the 'walls'. "A sordid love triangle."

Harry groaned. "That would be the worst."

"Who would be the third person?" Tyler asked.

"Malfoy, obviously," Cid said, grinning when Harry groaned again. "You did take him to the ball, but everyone knows he's got a thing for Harry, but you're Harry's mate and you were the one he had to save from the lake, so obviously you're playing them both, the villainous rogue trying to keep them apart and focused all on yourself because you're jealous of the attention Marcus is giving Harry."

"That's _awful_ ," Harry said.

"Wait, it gets better: Tyler's not really your friend, he's just blackmailing you about petrifying him two years ago and you feel too guilty to refuse, but really you hate it and desperately wish Malfoy would swoop in and save you from Tyler's evil machinations."

Harry stared at him, horrified at the mere idea.

"Harry's right," Tyler said, "that's awful. Where do you come into all of this, anyway?"

"I'm just an innocent onlooker. Or possibly the jealous friend who'll betray you both from envy that you don't pay enough attention to me."

"Of course," Tyler said dryly. "Give me back my Divination homework, I have to hand that in next lesson."

Tyler took away one of the rolls of parchment making up an outer wall of Cid's maze, letting the beetle scurry across the desk in front of them. Harry prodded it with his wand and turned it blue. It buzzed angrily at him and he made to flick it away, but it flew off before he could.

Four days later, Harry, Cid, and Tyler stared a copy of _Witch Weekly_ that Jia had passed them, asking if it was true. 'It' turned out to be an article detailing exactly the stupid theory that Cid came up with, with extra speculation as to how Ginny Weasley possibly fit into the love triangle, which she must, it insisted, because Harry had taken her to the Yule Ball.

"How the fuck?" Cid gaped.

"You were joking when you said we didn't pay enough attention to you, right?" Tyler asked.

"Of course I was fucking joking. What the fuck. Was she hiding in our fucking classroom or something?"

Harry buried his face in his arms. "Everyone's going to think I fancy Malfoy," he moaned. "My life is ruined."

But he couldn't complain as much as Tyler, who received a shocking amount of hate mail the next day. Someone even sent him an envelope full of undiluted Bubotuber pus. He had to rush off to the Hospital Wing and miss their morning classes, and kept getting more letters over the next week. The whole school heard about the supposed love triangle, and Harry got so annoyed with telling people that Malfoy wasn't his boyfriend, and that he didn't actually hate Tyler, that he ended up blowing out an entire corridor of windows.

* * *

At the end of May, Harry and the other champions were called down to the Quidditch pitch. A maze was growing over the pitch, much to the horror of Cedric Diggory, though Ludo Bagman assured him it would be back to normal after the task. Their aim was to reach the centre of the maze, fighting past spells, creatures from Hagrid, and various other obstacles.

"'E will of course 'ave to remove zat eye," Fleur remarked when Bagman asked if they had any questions.

"Ah, yes, Mr Evans, you'll not be permitted to use your magical eye during the task."

"Yeah, I have a normal one as well."

"'Ow will we know zat you are not wearing zis one?" Fleur demanded, sceptical of Harry's honesty.

"The other one's green."

"The judges will ensure he's not cheating," Bagman said hurriedly before they dissolved into a full blown argument. "Are there any more questions?"

Harry left the pitch feeling confident he'd win the tournament. He was sure he could defeat anything he came across and navigating the maze would be easy enough with a tracking arrow. He hadn't asked if he was allowed to bring anything with him; he figured that if they weren't, Bagman would have specified.

 _We've got this tournament won already. You really ought to start thinking about what you're going to do with the prize money, and that two grand you got from the healer that sold you out to Skeeter, and that fortune in your vault. You've only got three years left to live and I highly doubt you're going to have a child in that time, so you should spend it on something worthwhile. That money won't be any use to you in hell._

"Can I get rid of you in hell?" he growled as he entered the Entrance Hall, then realised he spoke aloud when Diggory looked at him, startled. "Sorry, talking to myself," he muttered, and hurried towards the dungeons.

 _I can see Skeeter's next headline now: Harry Evans, the Boy Who Lived in Madness._

"Shut up."

He was just at the entrance to the dungeons when he heard a pained cry from the opposite direction. He spun around and saw Diggory paused at the entrance to the corridor leading towards Hufflepuff.

"You heard that too, right?" Diggory asked. Harry nodded. "I think it came from over there."

He pointed to the corridor which had the ground floor classrooms. Both of them headed towards it.

"Can you see anyone?" Diggory asked. Harry scanned the classrooms, feeling a little thrill at actually using his new eye for something useful. Three classrooms down, he saw Alex Stone crumpled on the floor, one hand pressed to his cheek as he looked up fearfully at the boy who'd taken him to the Yule Ball.

"That one," Harry said, hurrying forwards and drawing his wand. He and Diggory burst into the room, Harry disarming the older boy while Diggory went straight to Alex.

"It was an accident," the older boy said as Diggory tugged Alex's hand down from his face, revealing a cut across his cheek.

"You _accidentally_ cut him?" Diggory said furiously. "Just like you 'accidentally' transfigured his head and 'accidentally' hit him?"

He helped Alex to his feet and walked him over to Harry. "Evans, will you go to the hospital wing with him? I'm taking Dawson to Professor Sprout."

Harry nodded, taking Alex's arm even as Dawson objected, "Oh, what? Diggory, don't be a dick. It's nothing."

"It's really not that bad," Alex said meekly. "It's just a little cut."

"See?"

Diggory glared at Dawson. "It's bad when it's not the first time. Alex, go with Evans. Professor Sprout will probably want to talk to you later."

"Cedric—"

"Come on," Harry said, tugging him out the classroom.

"I don't want him to get in trouble," Alex objected, looking back over his shoulder.

"Why not? He attacked you."

"It's nothing, really. He just got mad, that's all."

"It's no excuse," Harry said. "Why are you defending him?"

"He's my boyfriend."

Harry gave him an incredulous look. "Still? I thought you'd have broken up after he turned your head into a cat."

"He said he was sorry," Alex muttered. "He meant it, too, he bought me a really nice ring and he was really sweet and apologetic, and he's not done anything like it since."

"Until now," Harry pointed out.

"I told you, it's nothing. He's just under loads of pressure. He has his OWLs this year and his parents are really pushing him, so it's making him really stressed. He just lashed out, he didn't mean it."

"What about when he hit you?"

"It was an accident!" Alex shoved Harry away, glaring angrily at him. "It's nothing to do with you, anyway, or Cedric or anyone else. I can look after myself, you know. I'm not as pathetic as everyone thinks, and at least Kirby actually likes me and likes being with me. You're not even my friend, you stole Tyler from me, so don't pretend like you care anything about me!"

Harry gaped, staring as Alex spun and ran off.

 _It's not like he's wrong,_ the voice said carelessly. _You're_ _ **not**_ _friends._

"But I didn't _steal_ Tyler from him. How did I do that?"

 _Who knows? Who cares, for that matter? The boy's obviously twisted in the head._

Harry turned away, heading towards Slytherin and marvelling at the idea of the voice in his head saying someone else had issues.

* * *

Harry told Tyler about what happened, thinking he could talk with Alex to sort things out and maybe convince him that Kirby Dawson wasn't good for him, but it just led to Tyler hexing Dawson, which earned him a detention and made him fall out with Alex.

Dawson himself had a detention, Harry managed to discover, but he and Alex still seemed to be going out. He saw Diggory giving them dark looks at mealtimes.

With the third task now only four weeks away, and with no exams to revise for, Harry focused on researching spells that might help him in the maze. Learning them was no problem, of course, but he took the time to practice the wand movements and incantations, uncertain if the spectators would be able to see in the maze during the task. He assumed they must; it'd be very boring for them otherwise.

His friends helped when they could, giving suggestions on things he might need to know, and telling him about the various creatures they'd seen in Care of Magical Creature classes. Hermione and Neville had horror stories of things called Blast Ended Skrewts that they'd studied in the first term.

"But I think they're all dead," Neville added hopefully. "They all turned on each other."

"I hope so," Harry muttered.

The morning of the third task dawned brightly and brought with it another unpleasant news article from Rita Skeeter. Harry groaned just hearing about it, knowing it would be more garbage making his life difficult, but he was especially horrified to actually read it.

Rather than baseless gossipmongering, she had found out about the events of the Chamber of Secrets, and combined it with the revelation that Harry regularly talked to himself to speculate that, between Voldemort's failed killing curse and Vernon's abuse, it was entirely possible that he was an insane and dangerous dark wizard who ought to be locked up—either in Saint Mungo's long term ward, or in Azkaban. The looks and whispers from the rest of the school that morning were even worse than listening to them gossip about him, Malfoy, and Tyler.

Snape came up to Harry just as he finished eating breakfast to tell him the champions were congregating in the chamber just off the hall to greet their families, who came up to watch the last task. The scowl on his face told Harry that Sirius and Remus were already there and he scoffed down the last of his toast, said goodbye to Tyler and Cid, and hurried off to the side room. He was the first champion there but he ignored the other adults in the room and went straight to Sirius, grinning at him.

"Hey, kid."

"Hey. Didn't Remus come?"

"Full moon last night; he didn't quite feel up to coming today, but he said good luck."

"That's okay," Harry said quickly, not wanting to seem like he considered Remus' health less important than him. "I'm glad you're here."

They spent the morning walking around the grounds, Sirius telling him stories from when he was at Hogwarts and the things he, James, Remus, and Pettigrew got up to. Harry hung onto his every word, delighted to hear stories involving his dad and the occasional one involving Lily, who hadn't started dating James until their seventh year.

They returned to the Great Hall for lunch, where Sirius started across the hall.

"Um, Sirius? Where you going?"

Sirius paused, looking at the Gryffindor table then at the Slytherin one. "Right. You're not a Gryffindor."

"Nope."

"You're going to make me sit at the Slytherin table, aren't you?"

"Well, I can't sit anywhere else."

"Oh, Godric forgive me. C'mon then."

They sat on the end so Sirius at least didn't have to sit next to anyone but Harry. Cid and Tyler joined them, and Malfoy somehow managed to get a seat beside Harry despite being late to lunch. Since the Witch Weekly article, he'd been spending a lot of mealtimes and evenings sitting by Harry, making friendly conversation with him. Harry didn't like what it did for the rumours about them, but it was too exhausting to tell him to sod off all the time so as long as Malfoy didn't say anything really nasty, then Harry resigned himself to it. Malfoy seemed to get the message; Harry hadn't heard the word Mudblood out of him in weeks.

Sirius gave Malfoy a dirty look over Harry's head. Malfoy pretended not to notice.

"Nice to see you again, cousin."

"You're cousins?" Tyler asked.

"First cousins once removed," Malfoy clarified.

"Unfortunately," Sirius said.

Cid leaned across the table. "So, Mr Black, what's it like in—ow!"

Harry glared at Cid, who reached down to rub his leg.

"Don't call me that," Sirius said, pretending he didn't know what Cid was going to ask. "Mr Black sounds old and responsible."

"Responsible you're definitely not," Harry quipped, grinning. "But old…"

"Watch your mouth, kid. I'm young enough to—"

"Sirius Black!"

"Such an honour!"

"We're very interested in you, sir."

"Oh, yes, absolutely. Incredible wizard."

"Can we interest you in a toffee?"

"Custard cream?"

"I wouldn't if I were you," Harry warned Sirius, eying the Weasley twins suspiciously. "They're pranksters."

"And I doubt they very much like me," Sirius said, looking at the treats in the twins' hands. "I did scare the crap out of their brother last year."

"Did you?" Fred said.

"I think I remember something about a break in," George mused.

"Oh yeah, now you mention it…"

"Terrified poor Ronniekins."

"But surely you wouldn't think, sir, that we'd dare to try trick a known criminal."

George shook his head dramatically. "Terrible risk, that would be. Wouldn't dare. Not even for our own blood."

"I don't believe that for a second," Sirius said good-naturedly. "Remus told me about you two. You were good enough to get your hands on the Map and figure it out; you've probably got the nerve to take a little revenge for your kid brother."

Fred and George snatched their hands back, the treats disappearing into pockets as their faces turned serious. "You know about the Map?"

"What map?" Tyler asked curiously.

Harry looked at the twins in surprise. "They had the Map?"

" _You_ know about the Map?" George said.

Cid looked confused. Malfoy looked intrigued. Tyler looked annoyed. "What map?"

"My map," Sirius said with a grin.

" _My_ map," Harry corrected. "You gave it to me."

"Excuse you," George said, "I think you'll find that was our map first, and we'd quite like it back."

"You lost it," Sirius replied. "Remus confiscated it, and it's Harry's by right anyway."

"That map has to be earned," Fred countered. "He can't claim it just because you gave it to him."

"How did _you_ get it anyway?" George asked suspiciously.

"Remus gave it to me, and I gave it to Harry, who earned it by right of blood."

"Right of blood?" George repeated with a frown, and then his jaw dropped. "No way!"

"Not possible," Fred said.

"Weasleys, move along," McGonagall said, walking down between the Slytherin and Ravenclaw tables. "Classes are starting soon."

"We've got a free period," Fred said without taking his eyes off Harry. "Are you telling us—"

"—that Evans is related to the Marauders?"

"The Marauders?" Tyler repeated, now looking extremely annoyed that he didn't know what was going on.

"Oh, good heavens," McGonagall muttered. "This is the last thing I need. Weasleys, move along. Mr Evans, I'm sure your godfather would like to go somewhere else."

"I'm alright here actually, professor," Sirius said with a grin. "You're right he's related to the Marauders. Boys, meet the son of James Potter, better known to his friends as Prongs."

The twins' jaws dropped. McGonagall looked like she was developing a migraine. Cid and Malfoy just watched in befuddlement.

"Will someone please tell me what's going on?!" Tyler demanded.

* * *

"What are you doing talking to _them_?"

Harry scowled, his magical eye turning to watch Ron, with Ginny, leave the Great Hall and approach where he, Sirius, Fred, and George stood in the Entrance Hall after McGonagall insisted they move.

"It's called having a conversation," Fred told Ron. "Don't you have a class to get to?"

"He's a murderer, and _he's_ crazy _and_ a murderer."

"That wasn't Harry's fault," Ginny said before Harry could defend himself, glaring at Ron. "You know that."

Harry had never asked Ginny who knew she'd also been possessed by Riddle's diary, but he could guess now that her family did.

"He's innocent," Harry added in Sirius' defence. "And I'm not crazy."

 _Liar._

" _He_ has a name," Sirius said, frowning. "Why are you calling my godson crazy?"

"Haven't you seen today's paper?" Harry asked him. "Skeeter wrote another article about me, saying I'm insane."

Sirius scoffed. "The crazy ones are the people who believe anything that woman writes."

 _Do you think he'd still say that if he knew you heard voices?_

' _A_ voice,' Harry thought. 'And I'm ignoring you today.'

 _I do believe that sounds like a challenge._

"Just because the papers say you're innocent doesn't mean you are," Ron said.

"Do you really think Dumbledore would have let me into the school if I wasn't innocent?" Sirius said.

"You tried to kill me."

 _Shame he failed, don't you think?_

"I wasn't trying to kill you, I was just trying to get your rat. I realise I didn't go about it in perhaps the right way, and I'm sorry for that."

"My rat? What would you want with Scabbers?" Ron asked just as the bell for afternoon classes rang.

"I wanted to kill him."

"Sirius, you're supposed to be trying to convince him you're not a crazy criminal," Harry said.

 _Oh don't spoil the fun._

"Twenty points from Gryffindor. You four are meant to be in classes."

Everyone but Harry turned a glare on Snape.

"Don't be a git, Snape," Sirius said, and the four Weasleys looked at him in surprise, the twins clearly struggling not to grin. "The twins have a free period and the bell's only just rung."

"Which is when classes begin. You two should be in the library or your common room, not loitering in the hallway, and you," he said to Ron and Ginny, "should be in class. Move along, all of you."

Ron slouched off with a scowl, and Ginny left after wishing Harry luck in the task that evening. The twins asked Sirius to come with them to the library.

"You mind, Harry?"

He shook his head, and they set off, Snape watching Sirius go with hatred twisting his features.

* * *

"Professor _Lupin_ was a Marauder?"

"You know what they say about the quiet ones," Sirius answered George with a grin.

"So if you're Padfoot, Evans' dad is Prongs, and Lupin's Moony, who's Wormtail?"

Sirius' face darkened instantly. "Wormtail's a treacherous rat who lost the right to call himself a Marauder long ago."

Fred and George glanced at each other and decided it was safest if they didn't ask further.

Harry was content to sit in the library for the afternoon, reading a book while Sirius and the twins exchanged stories about pranks. The twins revealed their ambition to start a joke shop and talked about the ideas they'd already come up with.

Unfortunately Harry struggled to focus on eighteenth century goblin wars when the voice was giving a running commentary on Sirius and the twins' discussion, insulting the twins' inventions, insulting Sirius for thinking they were any good, and making snide remarks about how many of their pranks sounded like bullying.

He was glad when the bell rang and the twins had to go to class.

Sirius turned to Harry. "What you reading?"

"Goblins wars," Harry answered, closing the book and pushing it away, "but I couldn't really concentrate."

"Nervous about the task?"

Harry shrugged. "Yeah, I guess."

"I'm sure you'll do fine, kid. Sounds like the easiest one to me."

"Yeah. That reminds me, I need to change my eye before it starts."

"Where is it, back at Slytherin? Let's head down and do that then."

When they got there, Sirius surprised Harry by saying, "Hasn't changed much," and then elaborated, "You think me and your dad never snuck in here? We put pink dye in the shower heads in our seventh year."

Harry made his tracking arrow while he was there and took the multi-tooled penknife Sirius gave him for Christmas. Sirius watched him pocket both, and then take his non-magical prosthetic from the drawer of his bedside cabinet and pop out his magical one.

"Are you allowed to take those into the maze with you?"

"They never said we _couldn't_ take things into the maze," Harry answered, slipping the normal eye in and blinking until it settled in place.

Sirius grinned. "Fair enough."

Sirius didn't make such a fuss about sitting at the Slytherin table during dinner. Cornelius Fudge was there this evening alongside Marcus Fleetwood; Karkaroff had vanished the day Voldemort was resurrected. Fudge was acting as replacement judge.

When Harry and the other champions left to go down to the Quidditch pitch, applause and cheers followed him out and he inhaled shakily as he left.

 _Relax. We'll be fine. You can win this, then I've got some ideas about what to do with that money. Also, I hope you plan to exploit the attention everyone will give you for winning. I've been thinking that the hierarchy in Slytherin needs remodelling. There's a lot of rich, powerful, and stupid kids who we can manipulate to—_

"Shut up," he muttered, and ignored the odd look he got from Diggory.

The hedges covering the Quidditch pitch were now twenty feet high. The four champions stood with Ludo Bagman at the gap marking the entrance, while McGonagall, Moody, Hagrid, and Flitwick set off around the maze, there to come and get them if they decided they'd had enough and needed rescuing. Moody would be keeping his magical eye on Harry the whole time in the event of a seizure, but Harry insisted he didn't want rescuing unless he seized while facing an obstacle that put him in mortal danger. He could handle seizures; he wasn't letting it stop him from winning the tournament.

They entered the maze in order of their current points; with the second task drawing even, it left Harry in second place behind Krum, with Fleur third and Diggory fourth.

Harry entered the maze thirty seconds after Krum. From the start there was a short distance to a fork, where Harry went left at random, just far enough that he wasn't visible from the entry point, then he dug in his pocket for his tracking arrow. It read simply _centre of the maze_ and when he ordered it to direct him, it spun and pointed along the path he was taking. He went along it and rounded the corner just as he heard the whistle that meant Fleur had entered the maze.

The first obstacle he met was one of Hagrid's Blast-Ended Skrewts, a ten-foot long creature that seemed to be half-scorpion and half-lobster, armed with a sharp point on its tail and blasting fire out of its backside. Hermione and Neville hadn't said they were so big.

 _Why in all nine hells does Dumbledore allow that half-giant monster to work here?!_ the voice said, and Harry was inclined to agree with it. He couldn't even use Wish Magic; he wasn't sure about the spectators, but Moody, at least, was keeping an eye on him.

He managed to get it with a well-placed Impedimenta to the underbelly, which slowed it down enough for him to run under and flee from.

He stopped short when he rounded a bend and came face to face with Crowley, forgetting for one moment that Crowley would not be in a hedge maze at Hogwarts

 _It's not him!_ screamed the voice. _It's a Boggart! Stab it!_

He grabbed the knife, staggering away from the Boggart-Crowley as he fumbled to get the blade out, then stood his ground and slashed at the man. It cut across his stomach and he stumbled, but didn't bleed. Harry lunged forward, this time thrusting the knife and driving it into the man's chest, drawing it out then doing it again. The Boggart staggered, legs going out from under it, and Harry shoved it into a bush and rushed past, thinking only that he needed to get away.

He didn't slow down until he could conjure a butterfly and then he had to stand and breathe for a moment, surrounded by a swarm of butterflies just to reassure himself he could still do magic.

He straightened up and set off again. He saw Diggory at a crossroads and, with only a slight hesitation, Wished for him to go in the wrong direction. Diggory hurried left and Harry quickly checked his tracking arrow for the correct path to take, then went straight on.

He almost tumbled into a marshy-swamp when he rounded a corner, stepping one foot into it and then leaping back when the finned paws of a dugbog tried to grab his ankle. The creature snapped its razor sharp teeth unhappily but went back to sitting motionless like a dead log. He shook off water from his foot, conjured a low wooden bridge, and hurried across it.

He managed a little while without meeting anything, then stumbled across a patch of Devil's Snare that was easily destroyed with a blast of fire, although the bushes of the maze appeared immune, and then he came up to a spell of some kind. He wasn't sure what; there was a shimmer in the air, like the gleam of a soapy bubble in sunlight, reaching across the width of the maze and stretching as high as the tops of the bushes. He considered flying over it, but was curious as to what the spell did.

He peered closely, not touching and trying to figure it out, but there was no indication. He took out his knife and poked the shimmer. The tip of the blade slipped through as though the shimmer wasn't even there, not breaking it nor appearing in anyway damaged when he drew it out again. Shrugging, he pocketed it and stepped forward.

Pitch blackness engulfed him and he froze. He could see absolutely nothing and he was suddenly completely certain that the entire world had simply ceased to exist, that he and the wand gripped tightly in one hand were the only things left in existence and the rest of his life would be spent stuck in this all encompassing darkness.

 _No!_ the voice shouted violently. _No, I don't like it. Do something. Do something right now. I don't care what, just do something and get me out!_

He felt a terror at the thought of moving, an inexplicable fear of the unknown, but the voice screamed so fearfully that he couldn't ignore it. He stepped forward and the fading sunlight of the day blinded him. He stood blinking for a moment, waiting for his eyes to readjust, then looked behind him at the deceptively calm shimmer of air.

He shivered and hurried forward, pausing briefly around the corner to consult his tracking arrow before running on and then skidded to a halt when he reached a T-junction. He glanced left, saw only more bushes, then right and his breath caught—at the end, gleaming on a plinth fifty yards ahead, was the Triwizard Cup.

He ran, grinning broadly as he reached the opening with the plinth. He stopped by it, staring at the gleaming cup, and reached out a hand—then stopped.

'… _they planned to turn the Triwizard Cup into a Portkey for the final task.'_

Harry's hand hovered above the cup handle. He wasn't sure why. Voldemort was already resurrected. He had what he needed from Harry; there was no reason to think that the cup was a Portkey. There wasn't even any Death Eater in school who could sneak the enchantment onto it.

 _There is one,_ the voice muttered. _How much do you trust our greasy head of house?_

Enough, Harry thought. Snape might not always help when Harry needed it, but he never actively put him in danger.

Even so, he couldn't bring himself to touch the cup.

Resigning himself to losing, he sat down and waited for the other champions.

Fleur turned up first. Her clothes were stained with mud, grass, and what looked like blood, although she appeared uninjured herself. She raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at seeing Harry sat by the cup.

"Are we supposed to wait for ze others?"

Harry shrugged. "I dunno. I think you're meant to touch the cup if you're first."

Fleur's brow furrowed. "You mean you 'ave not?"

"No."

"Why?"

Harry shrugged, not wanting to admit to her that he was afraid. She eyed him suspiciously.

"You would let me win?"

 _We could risk it,_ the voice said, but it sounded no more keen about the idea than Harry did. He stood up and moved aside, gesturing for her to go forward. She moved slowly, still eyeing him, and reached for the cup, but just before her hand touched it, Harry grabbed her wrist.

She turned on him, wand raised, and he let go, backing up and raising his hands defensively. "I'm afraid it's a Portkey."

If it was, he would feel awful letting her touch it and getting kidnapped in his place, especially without warning her first.

"You're afraid?"

Harry opened his mouth to explain, but Krum arrived then. He had a split lip and a scrape on his chin, and his shirt was torn at the sleeve. He eyed the two of them, Harry with his hands up and Fleur with her wand aimed at him, and then looked at the cup. There was clear space between him and it, but he would have to pass between Fleur and Harry to get it, putting himself in Fleur's line of fire.

"Vot is going on?"

"I'm afraid the cup's a Portkey," Harry said again, but once more he was stopped from explaining by the huffing of someone running, and they all looked to see Diggory jog up behind Krum. He came to a stop just inside the opening, resting his hands on his knees. His trousers were soaked up to the mid-thigh, but like Harry he'd managed to get through otherwise unscathed.

"So—who—won?" he asked between breaths.

"No one yet," Fleur answered. She still had her wand up. "Evans thinks ze cup is a Portkey."

"To take us out?" Diggory asked.

"I do not know. 'E says 'e is afraid."

Harry flushed at the implication that he was a coward, even if it was a little true. He hastily explained his fear, and Fleur lowered her wand. The four of them stared at the cup.

"I suppose one of us has to take it," Diggory said. "It's probably safe enough. They already kidnapped you once, Evans."

"I know, I just…" He shrugged. "Fleur can take it."

Fleur drew back. "I 'ave no wish to be kidnapped!"

Diggory and Krum exchanged looks.

"You were here before me," Diggory said. "If they won't take it, you should."

"You're very fair," Krum said, looking from Diggory to the cup, and then back again, "or also afraid."

"Hufflepuffs pride themselves on equality and justice," Diggory said proudly, then gave a wry grin. "Gryffindors are the brave ones."

"Zis is ridiculous!" Fleur cried. "One of us must touch ze cup or we will be here forever."

When no one made a move, Diggory suggested, "We could all touch it."

 _Now there's an idea. If it is a trap, they can distract the Death Eaters while you run. And if it's not, just tell everyone you reached the cup first._

"A draw?" Krum asked.

"This whole tournament's been botched from the start," Diggory pointed out. "First Evans, then Mr Crouch got arrested so we had a new judge. You three all knew about the dragons before the task—I could tell by your faces, none of you were surprised. Karkaroff vanished so we've got another replacement judge, and now look. Four of us standing around too afraid to touch a cup because it might be cursed by Death Eaters."

Krum and Fleur fidgeted at that, but neither moved to approach the cup.

"At the start of the year, Professor Dumbledore said the Triwizard Tournament was an excellent way of establishing ties between young witches and wizards of different nationalities. What better way to do that than for all of us to win—for no one to lose."

He paused, looking between the other three. Harry shrugged, happy enough with the idea. He suspected half the school would be mad if he was the one to win, anyway. People had eased up towards him after discovering he really hadn't entered himself, but most of Hufflepuff and Gryffindor still wanted Diggory to win.

Fleur and Krum looked a little less certain, until Diggory finally added, "And if it really is cursed by Death Eaters, there'll be four of us to fight whoever's waiting for us, instead of just one person fighting alone."

They all looked at each other, then Fleur nodded and Krum followed suit. They all approached the cup, tightly gripping their wands in one hand and reaching forwards with the other.

"On three," Diggory said. "One—two—three—"

Together, they touched it—and the maze vanished around them in a swirl of colour and a yank at their navels.

* * *

 **A/N:** Please keep in mind that when Harry mentions being "defective" in relation to his asexuality, that is HIS opinion, not mine. Such feelings are not uncommon among those of us who are ace, especially when you don't have the advantage and support of the internet that we have today.


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

Harry's feet hit the ground. He threw himself backwards, crying out with fear and anger even as he fell against a hedge solid enough to hold him up, cringing away from a sudden burst of noise. He felt his magic lash out away from him, an uncontrolled burst knocking down everyone beyond himself and the other three champions, who'd dropped into fighting stances, wands whipping around in search of an enemy.

It took a moment for them to realise they were at the start of the maze, and the noise was the spectators screaming their cheers. Opposite them, the judges table had been blown over and the judges all knocked on their backs, Madam Pomfrey near them.

"Merlin's beard," Diggory muttered, lowering his wand with a nervous chuckle. Fleur muttered something in French, straightening up, and Krum tucked his wand away with a scowl, perhaps now regretting his decision not to take the cup himself.

Harry's legs gave out and he slid down to his knees, trembling, overwhelmed by the shock of the Portkey, the burst of deep fear at having been kidnapped again, and now a rush of relief at realising he was still safely within Hogwarts.

Something touched his shoulders and he flinched, then looked up as Madam Pomfrey crouched by him.

"What's wrong?" she asked briskly. "Where are you injured?"

"N-nothing. I'm fine."

 _I'm not! Which idiot decided to make the cup a Portkey after what we went through?_

Pomfrey frowned and cast a general diagnostic charm over him.

"It was just the Portkey," Harry said. "It startled me."

Her look of sympathy said she knew exactly why, and that 'startled' was an understatement, but she helped him to his feet.

"I'm sorry for blowing you over," Harry said quietly.

Pomfrey patted his arm. "I'll live."

Spectators had come running down to the ground, but their cheers were fading, confused chatter spreading through as they tried to figure out who won. Sirius pushed through them and came to stand by Harry, putting an arm around his shoulders and taking over from Pomfrey in keeping him steady.

"Alright, kid?"

Harry nodded shakily.

"Champions, to the judges table, please!" Dumbledore called. The table had been turned upright again and the judges were retaking their seats. Harry felt a bit guilty seeing Bagman picking up Marcus Fleetwood's cane and helping him to his feet.

Sirius helped Harry forwards and stayed with him, for which he was thankful. He was still shaking and wasn't entirely sure he wouldn't fall over again.

The judges sat facing them. Madame Maxime and Fudge were frowning, Bagman appeared to be trying not to look worried, while Marcus Fleetwood looked bemused, and Dumbledore looked both amused and slightly exasperated, although there was a flicker of regret when he took in Harry.

Although no one called for silence, the crowd fell quiet, all listening to hear what the result would be.

"It appears," Dumbledore said, looking over the four champions before him, "that you all reached the cup at the same time, an outcome none of us expected. You also all appeared to be prepared for a fight when you appeared."

Krum, Fleur, and Diggory looked at Harry. Harry looked at Dumbledore.

"Mr Crouch said his son and Voldemort—" there was a collective wince from almost everyone, and Bagman and Fudge made little noises of horror "—were going to turn the cup into a Portkey to kidnap me. I know they already did that, but I was still worried the cup was a trap."

"Then you were the first to reach it?" Bagman asked, looking hopeful. Harry nodded. "Then he's the winner!"

"The rules say that whoever touches the cup first wins the task," Marcus countered, "and their previous points have to be taken into account even then."

"If any one of them had touched it even momentarily before the others, they would have arrived here alone," Dumbledore said.

"Then they all came first?" Sirius asked. "So they all get the same score for this task?"

" _Non_ ," Fleur said, flicking her silver hair over her shoulder. "We 'ave decided, ze 'ole tournament is a draw."

Fudge bristled. "Miss Delacour, you cannot just decide that. I agree with Ludo; if Mr Evans was the first to reach the cup, he should be awarded first place."

Madame Maxime scoffed. "So you would favour 'Ogwarts!"

As Fudge spluttered objections, Marcus spoke up. "I think it would be disingenuous of us to ignore the bravery of Miss Delacour and Misters Diggory and Krum to touch a cup they had genuine fear would take them to Death Eaters."

"Harry touched it too," Sirius said.

Marcus nodded to Harry. "I'm not discounting your own courage, Mr Evans, but you had the comfort of knowing you've survived an encounter before—and thus could likely survive again—and the support of knowing you had back up this time if it was a trap."

Sirius started to object, but Harry nodded. He didn't like his cowardice, but he couldn't deny it when someone pointed it out, especially not to lessen others' bravery in comparison.

"It's still not up to Miss Delacour to decide on a draw," Fudge said.

"Ve all decided," Krum replied. "Diggory came last to the cup, but he vos the only person to never cheat in the whole Tournament."

"Are you admitting to cheating?" Fudge demanded, looking triumphant, clearly ready disqualify Krum for it.

"I vos told about the first task before it happened."

"So was I," Fleur said.

"And me," Harry admitted.

Bagman gave a weak little laugh. "Well, you weren't meant to be in the tournament in the first place, Harry, and you're so much younger—you deserve a little extra edge, wouldn't you say?"

 _Yes._

"No," Harry said. Not to say he hadn't appreciated Snape's warning, but if he was to be completely fair about things, he was more capable than absolutely anyone, even if he couldn't admit his magical skill.

"So the first task was uneven," Diggory said, "and the second was a disaster. Only this one was actually fair, and we all finished it together."

"But there's never been a draw in the Triwizard Tournament," Fudge said. "There's just no precedent for it."

Dumbledore finally spoke again. "Then perhaps it's time we set one, Cornelius. Our four champions make fair points. This tournament hasn't played out as expected from the very beginning. Why should we not end it unexpectedly? I vote in favour of a draw."

"I concur," Marcus said.

Fudge looked between Bagman and Maxime. Maxime looked down at Fleur, who put a hand on her hip and set her face.

"Very well," Maxime said. "A draw."

Fudge sighed. "Alright. Ludo?"

"Oh, er… well, yes, alright. A draw."

As Dumbledore stood up to announce it and cheers rang through the crowd again, Sirius said, "At least the winnings will split up evenly."

* * *

The award presentation ceremony took place in the great hall, with the four champions each awarded 250 Galleons and photographed holding the cup together. Harry heard Rita Skeeter had been banned from the school grounds and it must have been true because it was a different reporter there today.

The students were dismissed to their common rooms, and the Beauxbatons and Drumstrang ones to their carriage and ship, with only the champions lingering behind to say goodbye to their families.

"I'm glad you got through it alright," Sirius said to Harry in the Entrance Hall.

"You don't think I'm a coward for not wanting to take the cup myself?"

"I think it was a sensible precaution. It took a lot of courage to touch it at all." He took Harry by the shoulders and smiled at him. "Your parents would have been proud of you today."

Harry's heart swelled at that and, for the first time, he hugged Sirius. Sirius hugged him back. It wasn't like getting hugged by Hermione, and not just because of the height and gender difference. This, Harry thought, was probably what it was like to get hugged by a father.

"I should get back to Remus," Sirius said when Harry pulled away, "and you've probably got a party waiting for you in Slytherin. I'll see you at the end of next week."

Sirius wasn't wrong. Harry was greeted with cheers when he reached the common room, handed a bottle of butterbeer and pushed into the best armchair in pride of place to regale them with his adventure in the maze. They hadn't, it turned out, been able to see what was going on inside.

The party went on late into the night, but the excitement of the day had worn Harry out and he developed a headache shortly before midnight. He slipped away to the dorm, downed a glass of water and changed into his pyjamas, rubbing at his forehead as he climbed into bed. He fell easily into sleep, but it wasn't restful, soon disturbed by dreams.

* * *

 _She sat at a desk, writing, a single candle lighting the room. The words on the page were familiar, but they made no sense; she understood each one individually, but together they may as well have been gobbledegook._

 _She filled the page, signed the bottom—this too, was familiar and not—then picked up her wand to dry the ink and roll the parchment into a scroll, tying a piece of scarlet ribbon around it. She stowed it in a row of cubbyholes on the wall, then took up the candle and left the office._

 _She moved through rooms of strange things, brains and hourglasses and mirrors that showed things that didn't exist, until she came to a room with an upright cylindrical tank. It was filled with blueish fluid, difficult to see through at first until she drew closer, lifting the candle high to illuminate a figure inside._

 _Lord Voldemort._

 _She shivered in apprehension and fear and longing. Ever since he'd been here, she wanted to get closer, to find out more, to know everything, to speak to him and hear what he had to say. She hated him for what he was, what he'd done, but as soon as she'd laid eyes on him she wanted to know him inside out and back to front and upside down. She wanted to take everything he had to offer and give everything she had to provide._

 _She lifted the candle higher still, illuminating the white face within. The eyes were closed, but she stood staring, waiting, just as she had on nights past. Somehow, she knew, tonight was the night. Tonight it would happen._

 _She couldn't say how long it took. Perhaps hours, or perhaps seconds, but through the blue she saw movement. The eyelids did not flutter, did not snap wide, but slowly slid open, a gradual rise to reveal the red behind, a red made purple by the blue fluid._

 _Purple, like royalty._

 _ **Today,**_ _said a voice inside her head._ _ **Now.**_

(Somewhere someone screamed an objection, but their voice was distant and unheard.)

 _It was what she'd been waiting for. She was ready. She had been ready for weeks and now the time had come. She drew back, left the candle floating, and brandished her wand, saying a spell she'd never learnt. The words came to her from somewhere else, passing through her easily, and the blue fluid drained away and the charm-reinforced glass vanished._

 _Her Lord fell to one knee, catching himself on one hand. Even in his weakness he was graceful. He wore nothing, but he was beautiful, no matter that his skin was whiter than any human, like bone turned flesh, and his face was unlike any other. His eyes were the most beautiful, that lovely scarlet. It was why she always tied her scrolls with red ribbon._

 _ **I am weak.**_

 _She could hear the anger in his voice and hurried to where the potions were stored, fetching those that would restore his energy, his life, his power. He took them, drinking gladly, and rose to stand before her._

 _ **Better.**_

" _My lord…"_

 _ **My wand.**_

 _She fetched it, knowing the charms to get past the locks on the case in which it was stored. She lifted it reverently, carrying it like delicate crystal and going to her knees before him. When he took the wand from her, she shivered and gasped at the brief brush of fingers against her hand._

 _ **You have been a great help. I am still weak, but you will make me stronger.**_

" _Anything for you, my Lord."_

 _He reached out and took her chin, lifting her to her feet, her breath catching at the feel of his cold fingers against her skin._

 _ **I have more to do, but when I am free, you will be rewarded beyond your wildest dreams.**_

" _Being in your presence is reward enough, my lord," she breathed._

 _He smiled, and even that was beautiful._

 _ **Take me to the Hall of Prophecies. There is something I must hear, and then lead me out.**_

* * *

Harry woke, rolled over, and threw up over the side of his bed. His head throbbed so violently he couldn't see. He could feel sweat soaking through his pyjamas, but he shivered with chill. He could hear someone calling his name and worried voices, but he could only lie there retching until there was nothing but acid.

Voldemort was free.

Eventually he managed to lift his head, the pain in it receding. The dorm was fully lit. Tyler was knelt on Harry's bed, having held Harry's hair out the way, and Cid was standing nearby, watching worriedly. Stuart appeared to still be asleep, but Harry saw Orion peering out from behind his own curtains, though he ducked back when Harry looked.

"You need to go to the hospital wing?" Cid asked.

"Snape," Harry said, fumbling for his wand. He vanished the mess on the floor and got to his feet.

"Harry, it's almost one o'clock," Tyler objected, climbing after him. "And you look like you could do with seeing Pomfrey, not Snape. You look awful."

Harry ignored him. He could imagine how awful he looked; he still felt sick with revulsion.

He stumbled for the door, not caring when Tyler insisted on coming with him. As long as no one tried to stop him, the whole school could come for all he cared.

Voldemort was free.

Only a handful of people were still awake in the common room, a small group chatting together and a couple making out in a dark corner. Others were passed out on the sofas or floor, and Logan Sparrow was drawing on their faces.

He looked over as Harry and Tyler passed by. "Where are you two going? It's long past curfew."

"Snape," Harry said, not even looking over.

Something in his voice kept Logan from arguing. Harry left the common room, Tyler still following, and headed straight for Snape's office, but found it empty, so he went to Snape's living quarters.

"Harry, where are you going?"

Harry didn't answer. He hadn't changed his eye after the task, but he Wished for it now, not caring if Tyler saw, and quickly changed it so he could look through the walls, but Snape wasn't there, either.

"Harry, I really think you should see Pomfrey," Tyler said, still trailing after him. His slippers made a soft slapping noise against the flagstones; Harry's own feet were bare and cold.

"Dumbledore," Harry said, and headed in that direction.

Tyler sighed, but stuck with him. They met with no one until they reached the Entrance Hall, where Professors Sprout and McGonagall were just greeting Mr and Mrs Diggory. Harry recalled seeing them earlier in the day. He had no idea why they were still here—or coming back—but he didn't care.

McGonagall saw them and came over, expression furious, while the Diggorys and Sprout headed for the marble staircase. "Mr Lyle, Mr Evans, what are you doing here? Good heavens, Mr Evans, what on earth's the matter?"

"He woke up screaming, professor," Tyler said. "I thought it was just a really bad nightmare but then he threw up, and now he insists on seeing Professor Snape, but he wasn't in his office so now he wants to see the headmaster."

"To Madam Pomfrey, I think," McGonagall said, grabbing Harry's arm. "Come along, Evans. Return to your dormitory, Lyle."

Harry clutched her arm, not moving when she tried to tug him forwards. "Voldemort," he said, startling her into stopping. "Voldemort's free."

"What are you talking about?"

" _Voldemort's free! He escaped the ministry!_ "

McGonagall stared at him with horror.

"You can't know that," Tyler whispered, white faced. "Harry, you don't know that."

"I saw it." He was feeling stronger now the words were out, more focused. "I saw it. He's out. I have to tell the headmaster."

He wrenched free of McGonagall and ran for the marble staircase. He ignored her shout, taking the stairs two at a time and turning down the corridor at the top. He hurtled past Sprout and the Diggorys, hearing their startled cries, and ran for the nearest staircase to take him up.

But as he passed by the Hospital Wing, the door swung open and Dumbledore stepped through. Harry almost ran into him, skidding to a stop just in time to avoid a collision.

Dumbledore looked down at him in surprise and opened his mouth to speak, but Harry cut him off.

"Voldemort's free."

Dumbledore's expression instantly became serious. "Are you certain?"

Harry nodded. Dumbledore didn't ask again, nor did he ask how Harry knew.

Sprout and the Diggorys reached them then, with McGonagall and Tyler coming in close behind. Sprout stopped by Harry, looking between everyone.

"What is going on?"

"Where's our son?" Mrs Diggory asked in a tremulous voice.

Dumbledore gestured to the Hospital Wing. "Through here," he answered softly, and the Diggorys hurried inside, Sprout following. Harry caught a glimpse of the curtains around two of the beds, one on the right and one on the left. Sprout led the Diggorys to the right one and Mrs Diggory gave a heartbroken wail as she rounded the curtains.

"Mr Lyle, I believe you're friends with Alex Stone," Dumbledore said to Tyler, who looked away from the door.

"Um, yeah, I guess. We kind of fell out."

"I think he'd appreciate your presence right now. Please go inside, he's in the second bed on the left."

"What happened to him? Is he hurt?"

"Mr Stone will tell you, please go inside."

Tyler hurried in, looking worried.

"Minerva, would you take Harry to your office, please, and wait for me there. I have to see to Mr Dawson, then I'll come join you."

McGonagall nodded and put a hand on Harry's shoulder. "Come along, Mr Evans."

Suddenly exhausted now the news was delivered, Harry went without objection.

* * *

Tyler glanced worriedly in the direction of Mrs Diggory's sobs, but headed straight for the bed Dumbledore had indicated.

"Alex?" He cautiously tugged the curtains aside, peering around before stepping through. Alex lay curled on the bed, no sign of injury, but his face was pale and drawn and his eyes red from crying. At the sight of Tyler, they filled with tears again.

Completely forgetting they'd fallen out, Tyler went forward, climbed on the bed as Alex sat up, and pulled him into a hug. Alex looked apprehensive at his approach, but as soon as Tyler touched him he flung his arms around him and burst into sobs.

For a while Tyler just held him, resting his head against Alex's and rubbing his back, feeling his shoulder grow damp.

Eventually Alex's sobs eased and he drew back. There was a box of tissues beside the bed and Tyler pulled out a few, passing them to him and waiting until Alex blew his nose and wiped his eyes.

"What happened?"

Alex squeezed his eyes shut, fresh tears spilling down his face. "It was my fault."

"What was?"

"I told him I'd do it."

"Told who you'd do what?"

"I told Kirby I'd have sex," he said miserably, covering his face with both hands, which meant Tyler didn't have to hide his anger at hearing that name. He tried not to let it through in his voice.

"I thought you wanted to wait. Did he make you? Is that why you're here, did he force you? I'll kill him if—"

"Don't say that!" Alex cried, looking up with a horrified expression. "Tyler, don't say that please, Cedric's already dead, don't say—"

"Cedric _Diggory_?" Tyler gaped. " _Dead?_ "

Alex nodded, glancing towards the curtains. They could still hear Mrs Diggory crying, but softer now.

"Alex, tell me everything that happened."

He did. Kirby convinced him to have sex during the Hufflepuffs' party for the end of the tournament, but when it came time to actually doing it, Alex changed his mind. Kirby tried to force him only for Cedric to interrupt and pull Kirby off.

"Professor Sprout said that if he ever hurt me again then he'd be expelled."

"They should have expelled him last time," Tyler said, punching the bed with one hand. He noticed Alex looking away, an embarrassed flush suffusing his cheeks. "He did something else, didn't he? Something before today. What did he do?"

"He didn't—he said he didn't mean to," Alex mumbled, but Tyler could tell he didn't believe it anymore. Better late than never, perhaps, but Tyler really wished he'd realised it before.

"What did he do?" he demanded.

"He hit me. He just lost his temper, and he was really sorry straight away, he felt really bad about it, so I hid the bruise and didn't tell anyone."

Tyler clenched his fists, grinding his teeth. He wanted to yell at Alex for being such an idiot, but he knew his friend well enough to know that wouldn't help. Alex was too trusting and too sensitive, he always had been. Tyler never realised how much trouble it could get him in.

Forcing his voice as calm as possible, he asked, "What happened after Cedric interrupted? How did he die?"

"He and Kirby started fighting because Kirby didn't want him to tell anyone what happened. Kirby knocked him down and cast a Memory Charm, but Cedric forgot the whole evening, and then Kirby made him drink loads of firewhiskey so it would just look like he forgot because he drank too much. Kirby made me help him put Cedric in the sixth years dorm and he said if I told anyone then he'd really hurt me, and…"

"And what?"

"I agreed!" Alex wailed, bursting into tears again. "I was scared so I agreed, but then the other sixth years found Cedric and he was dead and Madam Pomfrey said he died of alcohol poisoning and it's _all my fault!_ "

Tyler pulled him close, rubbing his back and saying nothing because he had no idea what _to_ say.

* * *

Harry was dozing on McGonagall's sofa when Dumbledore finally turned up. Harry was embarrassed to find McGonagall had put a blanket over him, and he neatly folded it on the far end of the sofa as Dumbledore pulled over a chair from McGonagall's desk and sat opposite Harry. McGonagall stayed at her desk.

"Thank you for waiting for me, Harry. I'm afraid it's been a difficult night. Would you please tell me exactly how you know about Voldemort's return?"

"I dreamt it," Harry said, "but it was—it was real. I know it was. I know it sounds crazy—"

"Not at all," Dumbledore assured him. For some reason, he was looking to the left of Harry's head. "You are correct; Voldemort has escaped the Ministry of Magic."

McGonagall gasped. "How?"

"Harry?" Dumbledore prompted, and Harry described everything he saw in his dream.

"But I don't understand how I saw all that. Or why I felt like a girl when I did," he added with a little shiver. It wasn't that he had a problem with girls or the idea of being one, it had just felt… unfamiliar and strange.

Dumbledore sighed then. "I'm afraid that's because at the time, Voldemort was partially possessing Tara Williams. He is quite adept at the mind arts. He was working through her, and you were seeing through him."

Harry looked at him, baffled. "What do you mean I was seeing through him?"

Dumbledore turned to McGonagall. "Minerva, I do apologise, but could we borrow your office privately for a little while?"

McGonagall looked irritated, but nodded stiffly and rose, taking a few things from her desk before leaving the office. Once she was gone, Dumbledore turned back to Harry, but leant his elbows on his knees, linked his fingers, and dropped his gaze to them.

"When Voldemort attempted to kill you as an infant, and his curse backfired on him, it created a connection between you and he transferred some of his powers. This is why you're able to speak Parseltongue; it is a genetic ability, passed down through families, but there is no instance of it in either of your parents' family history."

Harry barely heard this last part, his mind latching onto the far more horrifying concept that there was a magical connection between him and Voldemort. Is that what the voice in his head was? Voldemort talking to him?

 _Really? You think_ _ **I'm**_ _Voldemort? If I were, don't you think I'd be a lot more unpleasant?_

Harry ignored it and asked, "This connection… what exactly does it involve? Could he speak to me through it or something like that?"

"Oh no," Dumbledore assured him. "When Voldemort is feeling some strong emotion, it allows you to see into his mind and feel glimpses of what he does, but nothing so direct as speaking to you."

 _Told you,_ the voice said smugly as Harry all but sagged with relief.

"He can't have done it on purpose, can he?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "Certainly not. But I cannot say why it happened. What occurred in Godric's Hollow all those years ago is entirely unique."

"Why'd he come after me? I was just a baby back then. Why did he try to kill me?"

"For that, we will have to relocate to my office," Dumbledore said, standing and moving the chair back to its place.

"Will you actually look at me there?"

"No," he said quietly. "Forgive me my rudeness, Harry, but that connection between you and Voldemort runs both ways. Thus far, he appears to be unaware of it, but if he realises—"

"He can see through me?" Harry asked, horrified.

Dumbledore nodded. "Worse, he could force his way into your mind and use it to manipulate and misdirect your thoughts. It is for this reason that I will not maintain eye contact. I have no wish to give Voldemort more incentives to attempt to penetrate your mind."

"I don't understand."

"If Voldemort suspects that our relationship is anything more than that of teacher and pupil, then he would seize the chance to possess you and use you against me."

"Well there's nothing to worry about there. It isn't more than teacher and pupil," Harry pointed out.

"Except there is," Dumbledore said softly. "You thoroughly dislike and distrust me—something which you and Voldemort have in common. As you well know, your magic is dangerous when you are angry. How much more dangerous do you think it would be if the damage you cause were directed at the source of your anger?"

"Is there a way to break it, this connection?"

"No. However," Dumbledore added, "there is a way to block it. Have you ever heard of Occlumency?"

"It sounds vaguely familiar. I might have come across the term before."

"It is a branch of magic concerned with defending the mind from external penetration. Should you wish, Professor Snape would be able to teach it to you. He is quite adept at it himself. For now, shall we move to my office?"

Nodding, Harry followed him out. They walked up to Dumbledore's office in silence, and once there Dumbledore told him to take a seat and went to a black cabinet. He took from it a shallow stone basin, which he carried carefully to his desk. He drew his wand, touched the tip to his temple, and slowly drew it away. A silver strand clung to it. Harry thought at first that it was hair, but it was too bright and then it came away from Dumbledore head and, with a small flick, detached from the wand and floated down into the basin.

"This is a Pensieve," Dumbledore explained. "It allows one to remove memories and peruse them from an outside perspective. It's quite helpful for those times when you feel you have entirely too many thoughts in your head. I'm sure you're familiar with the feeling."

Harry shrugged, but wondered if he could take the voice out like that.

 _Don't even try it._

"What does this have to do with why Voldemort tried to kill me?"

Dumbledore sat. True to his word, he still hadn't looked Harry in the eye. "Little under a year before you were born, a prophecy was made. It predicted the birth of a child who would be able to defeat Voldemort. This prophecy was heard by myself, and a Death Eater. The Death Eater only heard part of it, and they reported that to Voldemort."

"The prophecy's about me," Harry said, not even surprised. "Why didn't you tell me about this before?"

"Because I wanted to protect you from it. You are so young, and you have been through so much already; I had no desire to put anything more on your shoulders."

Harry dropped his gaze to his fisted hands as the objects around them began to tremble on their tables, fighting to keep his magic and emotions under control. "I deserve to know."

"You do, and that is why I'm telling you now."

It wasn't an apology, but Dumbledore was jabbing the Pensieve with his wand and the image of Sybil Trelawney rose out of it, draped in shawls and her over-large glasses. She revolved slowly and when she began to speak it was in a surprisingly deep voice.

" _The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies… and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not… and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives… the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…_ "

For several long minutes after the figure stopped speaking, the office was filled with absolute silence. Harry stared at the Pensieve, repeating in his head what he just heard, going over it, figuring it out and then lifting his gaze to Dumbledore, whose eyes remained fixed on the stone basin.

"I have to kill him."

Dumbledore's expression was one unlike Harry'd ever seen on him before—sad, apologetic, regretful.

"Yes," he said quietly.

"Why didn't you tell me this before? This is… of all the things to keep from me, _this_ …"

"You would have me tell an eleven year old boy that he was destined to one day defeat the darkest wizard to walk the earth?"

Put like that, Harry could see his point. He was about to persist, to say that if he'd known then he could have done it in February, but he suddenly recalled the Assistant's words: _'Then he just goes back to being a wraith, but don't expect him to stay down for another decade … and you're in no state to do what needs doing to make it so he can properly die.'_

 _You wouldn't have the nerve to do it anyway,_ the voice said, and Harry knew it was right. For all that he hated Voldemort for murdering his parents and trying to kill him, he still balked at the thought of actually, actively killing someone. He felt guilty for it because if anyone deserved to die it was Voldemort, but he just wasn't sure he could bring himself to actually do it.

"Harry, I know you don't take Divination, so let me tell you that prophecies are not infallible. They are not set in stone and they are easily misinterpreted."

"That one seemed pretty clear to me."

Dumbledore shook his head. "They often do, until they've come to pass and we realise we've been looking at them from entirely the wrong perspective. But my important point is this: just because a prophecy predicts your involvement in Voldemort's downfall does not guarantee it. In fact, at the time it was made, it may not even have been about you specifically."

"Because I hadn't been born yet?"

"Because you weren't the only baby born at the end of July whose parents had stood three times against Voldemort. There was another child born at the same time who it could have applied to, but Voldemort elected to go after you."

"Why? Who was the other baby?"

"Neville Longbottom."

Harry's jaw dropped. " _Neville?_ "

"His parents were Aurors who fought Voldemort, and as I'm sure you're aware his birthday is the day before yours."

"So Voldemort picked me because my birthday's later, is that it?"

"I really couldn't say. Either of you could have fulfilled it, but Voldemort elected to go after you first. Perhaps he had some knowledge of the power you'd grow up to have, or perhaps he choose at random."

"Okay, but it _is_ about me now. I have to kill Voldemort."

"No," Dumbledore said quietly but firmly. "Harry, understand that a great deal of time, prophecies are entirely self-fulfilling."

"So if I ignore it…?"

"Then it may never come to pass."

"Voldemort won't die," Harry said, but Dumbledore shook his head again.

" _You_ won't kill him, but that doesn't mean he won't die."

Harry stared at the Pensieve, wondering about that. No one managed to defeat him before, but here he was with all this power…

"Does Voldemort know about it?"

"I'm afraid so, though he originally knew only part of it. I suspect he learnt the full prophecy tonight when he fled the Department of Mysteries. They have a hall there dedicated to storing every prophecy ever made. It seems highly unlikely he would have left without taking the chance to hear it."

"So then he'll keep coming after me, and I'll have no choice but to kill him, and it'll come true."

"Perhaps," Dumbledore said, leaning back in his chair and tilting his head back, staring at the ceiling. "Or perhaps he too will realise the risk of a self-fulfilling prophecy and elect to leave you be."

Harry gave him a sceptical look. "You don't really believe that, do you?"

"I think it entirely possible, actually. Voldemort has faced you twice now in the past four years and been soundly defeated both times. He knows of your power, and Voldemort is many things, but not stupid. If we are fortunate, he will turn his attentions away from you in hopes you will do the same."

" _I_ don't believe that."

Dumbledore smiled faintly. "I do not believe it either, but I hope. Regardless, I and many others will fight to keep Voldemort from gaining power again, and for the time being, at least, he will be of little threat to anyone while he seeks to restore his power base, so I _am_ certain in saying you need not concern yourself with fighting him. Focus on your studies and your childhood, and when the time comes, you can choose for yourself whether your wish to stand and fight or not."

* * *

"Stand up, Lucius."

It took effort, but Lucius finally got to his feet, standing unsteadily and not sure how long he could remain upright before his legs gave out on him. He kept his gaze down, not daring to meet the Dark Lord's eye. Beyond him, against the drawing room wall, Lucius could just make out the young woman who'd come with him, trembling. Lucius had no idea who she was, but he could guess she hadn't realised what she was getting into when she freed the Dark Lord.

Narcissa was still behind him, out of sight. He silently hoped the Dark Lord didn't decide to turn his attention to her, and was immensely thankful that the Dark Lord hadn't come a week later when Draco was home.

"Consider yourself lucky, Lucius. I should kill you for abandoning me yet again, but too many of my servants are incarcerated and you happen to have something I need."

"Anything, my lord."

 _Except my wife and son. Anything but that. Please don't ask me for that._

"It's time your pet was released back to where he belongs."

Lucius cautiously lifted his eyes to look at the Dark Lord. "My lord?"

Those red eyes were full of hatred and anger. "Is that not why you kept him all these years? In case I had use for him? I have once already; now I need him again."

"My lord, if we return him—" He paused to lick his lips, glad now that Narcissa wasn't in his line of sight. "I marked him, my lord. They'll know who—that I… they'll come for me."

"Then you will go." The Dark Lord put his wand to Lucius' chin, and Lucius stopped breathing. "Right now, Lucius, he is far more valuable to me than you are. You'll pay the consequences of your disservice all these years. But fear not…" He lowered the wand and Lucius breathed again. "You won't be imprisoned for long. I intend to release my loyal servants, and those arrested this year. You'll be granted your freedom then."

Lucius swallowed. "Thank you, my lord."

The Dark Lord stepped back. "Send him back, Lucius, with orders to serve me. Do this if you wish to ease my ire."

Lucius bowed, legs trembling as the motion threatened to send him to the floor again. "It is my wish to serve, my lord."

The Dark Lord turned away, gesturing to the young woman as he swept toward the door. Lucius watched him go, debating, then called out. He almost regretted it when the Dark Lord turned to face him again, but pushed forwards.

"My lord, I may have information that you will find useful."

"You 'may', Lucius?"

He could hear the unspoken threat and hurried to explain. "The Assistant, my lord. I think his behaviour the night of your miraculous resurrection was the result of the Animancupium. He showed signs of pain when he helped the boy," he quickly added when the Dark Lord's expression only grew angrier. "When you told him not to help the boy, he began to shake, and when he changed the runes on the floor he was in pain. I believe he was fighting orders from his Master—I recognise the signs—orders to obey you."

"You base this theory on very little evidence, Lucius."

"Yes, my lord, but he also claimed he had orders to remain in the village of Hogsmeade unless summoned. I had thought those were your orders, but you knew nothing of him. I thought—" he faltered "—I thought you might wish to know. If it's true, he can be forced to work for you."

The Dark Lord said nothing, merely considered it, then turned and swept out without a word. The young woman hurried after him, and when Lucius heard the front door bang shut, he let out a heavy breath and collapsed to his knees, hands on the floor as he fought not to sprawl gracelessly across the marble. He'd never suffered the Cruciatus Curse for so long; even now it left a lingering pain that he knew only time would ease.

Narcissa came forwards, but she didn't touch him or offer aid, just moved to stand before him.

"What 'pet' was he talking about?" she asked, voice trembling slightly.

Lucius hung his head. "Forgive me, Narcissa."

"For what?" She dropped to a crouch, anger mixing with the concern on her face. "Lucius, what have you done?"

He held out a hand. "Help me up."

"Tell me what you've done!"

"I'll show you."

She eyed him, then took his hand and helped him stand, letting him lean on her. They moved through the house to his personal cellar, heading down into the darkness. Lucius drew his wand and pulled away from Narcissa so he could cut his hand and press it to the stone of the far wall. It rumbled and light shone out as the door slowly swung open, revealing the hidden room beyond.

His pet appeared to have been pacing, but he turned to the door as it opened, relief clear on his face at the sight of Lucius.

"Master—" he began, then saw Narcissa. He fell back a step, glancing warily between Lucius and Narcissa. Lucius said nothing, eyes on the floor as Narcissa stared at the man in the room, her eyes wide. "Master?"

"Be quiet," he ordered.

"A pet," Narcissa breathed, still staring, horrified. "You call this a pet?"

"Narcissa—"

She whirled on him, horror giving way to fury. "You've kept this man down here for _fifteen years?_ Locked up like an animal? All this time you've been lying to me! I thought you wanted a private space, a place to be alone as I have my sitting room. Instead you've kept a man imprisoned!"

Lucius said nothing. What could he say? He couldn't even explain to himself why he'd kept the man for so long; he'd certainly never intended to.

"Did you use him for…?" She trailed off, but pointed a finger at the bed.

"No!" Lucius straightened up as much as he could. "Narcissa, I swear to you, I never used him for that. I have _never_ betrayed our marriage—I _would_ never—"

Narcissa slapped him. Lucius left his head hanging aside where it fell.

"There are more ways than infidelity to betray our marriage," she said, voice trembling with anger. "If the Dark Lord hadn't just given orders for him, I would turn you in myself. When the Aurors come for you, I will not stand in their way, and until they do, I do not want to even see you."

He nodded. She stalked away and he glanced up, watching her go, feeling his heart break.

When the door at the top of the stairs slammed shut, he turned back to the hidden room.

"Help me to the bed," he ordered, and his pet hurried forward, supporting him as he staggered across to the bed. Lucius collapsed onto it, groaning.

"I felt your pain," his pet said, dropping to his knees by the bed, watching Lucius worriedly.

Lucius lay back, closing his eyes with a grimace, and lifted his hand. His pet ducked his head and pressed against it, and Lucius tangled his fingers in the dark strands of hair.

"He punished me for leaving him at his resurrection. I'm sorry you felt it."

"I'd take anything for you, Master."

"I know." Lucius sighed. "You have work to do, precious."

"I don't understand."

Lucius opened his eyes, turning his head to look at the man, who watched him, so open and trusting, utterly loyal. When Lucius put the curse on him to gain that loyalty, he'd done it in spite, taking vicious pleasure in enslaving what had been an angry and defiant man. If the Dark Lord had ordered then what he did now, Lucius would have obeyed gladly, delighting in forcing this man to work for him.

Now, however, he felt a reluctance at letting his pet go. He'd do it—if he disobeyed then his family was as likely to suffer for it as Lucius himself—but he did so reluctantly.

"The Dark Lord needs your help again."

"More transfiguration? Can I at least stay as a man this time?"

Lucius smiled faintly. "No transfiguration," he assured, and his smile fell. "I have to send you back."

"No!"

"Yes, precious. The Dark Lord's orders are law. He needs you to gather information for him. You have to return and pretend to be glad you're back. You mustn't let them know about the Animancupium, and you must play your role perfectly—this is even more important than when you kidnapped Harry Evans, do you understand?"

He nodded unhappily.

"You'll have to act like you hate me when they discover the truth, and pretend you don't believe all the things I've taught you. You have to make them trust you, so that when I come for you again you'll have information about them that you can give me."

"You'll come for me?" he asked hopefully.

"I promise. But it may be a while, and you cannot reveal your deception at all in that time. You have to play it perfectly, precious."

He ducked his head, pressing his forehead lightly to Lucius' side. "What about the boy?"

Lucius stroked his hair, considering it. The Dark Lord hadn't said anything about it and Lucius couldn't see that it'd make much difference either way.

"You can do what you like."

His pet turned his head, looking to him curiously. "You're not giving me orders?"

"Not in this. You can decide what to do about him yourself, but it would benefit the Dark Lord if you were to have a good relationship with him. We need all the information you can gather."

"Yes, Master."

* * *

There were no classes for anyone at Hogwarts the day after the Third Task, giving them a long weekend so they could all deal with the death of a student, the arrest of another, and the revelation that Voldemort was loose, which was front page news.

They weren't confined to their common rooms, but most people did stay there. The Hufflepuff table was mostly empty at all three meals; Harry heard that Dumbledore had arranged for food to be sent to their common room. The Great Hall felt extremely empty without them, a feeling not helped by the quiet conversation of the other three tables. No one seemed willing to talk much above a mutter.

Alex had gone home, Tyler informed Harry and Cid on Friday morning; he'd been too upset to stay for the final week of term. Harry was quietly glad that the events had worried Tyler enough that he seemed to have forgotten that Harry dreamed about Voldemort's escape. Harry didn't want to explain that there was a connection between him and Voldemort.

They had a memorial service for Cedric on Sunday, and classes resumed on Monday. Some people grumbled about that, but Harry was glad for it. Even the not-very-focused lessons that always came at the end of the year were better than sitting around with nothing to do but think.

There was no awarding of the house cup at the leaving feast that year. Black drapes hung where the banners of the winning house usually did, and Dumbledore gave a small speech on Cedric, honouring his integrity and sense of justice. He followed it up with an encouraging speech about sticking together and standing up for one another in the face of the coming darkness.

He'd just asked them to raise their glasses to Cedric's memory when the door of the Great Hall opened. Many people turned to look, but Harry just assumed it was a late comer and kept his gaze on his bowl, pushing half eaten treacle tart in and out the remaining custard. Now, like so often in the past week, his thoughts were taken up by Voldemort and the prophecy, and figuring out if he could or would kill Voldemort one day.

There was some murmured chatter from the students, but it was a crash at the staff table that finally got Harry's attention. He looked up to see all the teachers staring at the door. McGonagall was gobsmacked, Dumbledore was more openly shocked than Harry ever imagined he would be, and Snape had gone completely white, a dropped goblet in front of him spilling liquid over the table and onto his lap.

Curious, Harry turned to look, and had to lean back to see past the other students. A man stood just inside the door, his robes dirty and torn slightly, his hair a mess, eyes wary behind round glasses.

"Who is that?" Tyler wondered.

Harry, feeling like his world had just turned upside down, barely heard himself answer.

"That's my dad."


	20. Chapter 20

**Chapter 20**

 _That's not possible._

Harry clambered off the bench. Cid and Tyler were staring at him, but he ignored them, ignored the voice, ignored everyone, all his attention fixed on the man by the door. He started towards him, wanting to see if he was real. He already had a voice inside his head; was he seeing things now?

A bolt of light shot in front of him, cutting so close it ruffled his hair, and slammed into the wall with a burst of sparks. He whirled, looking for where it came from, and saw several teachers leaving the staff table. Dumbledore had been the one to cast the spell, but Snape was moving the fastest, wand in hand as he ran down beside the Slytherin table. When he reached Harry, he grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back, placing himself firmly between Harry and the man by the door.

James Potter.

His _father_.

He tried to push past Snape. "Let me go! That's my dad!"

"Your father's dead," Snape snapped, grabbing a handful of Harry's robe to keep him from pushing by. "Whoever that is, it's not James Potter."

All the students were whispering curiously now, looking between Harry, James, and the teachers. Dumbledore sharply commanded them all to stay in their seats as he hurried down the hall, McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey close behind. James cowered back at their approach.

Harry stared at him, not trying to get past Snape now. The man was real, and he really did look like Harry thought he did, but he didn't know what explanation he'd prefer. The idea of someone pretending to be his father filled him with a fury that he knew would cause a dangerous outburst if it was true—but if this man was really James Potter, where had he been for the last fourteen years? How had he survived Voldemort's attack in Godric's Hollow and why had he turned up now, here?

The teachers reached James. Dumbledore approached with his wand raised, but McGonagall didn't seem able to lift hers, staring at James with open shock. Pomfrey had her wand half-raised, but ran her gaze over James like she was trying to figure out if he was real. At the staff table, Moody was on his feet, wand aimed unhesitatingly at James; many of the students hunched over and some looked ready to slide under the tables.

"Who are you?" Dumbledore demanded. Harry had seen him like this before, but many of the students looked surprised by the commanding tone of their normally placid headmaster.

James glanced fearfully between Dumbledore and the wand aimed at his face. "I'm James Potter."

"James Potter died fourteen yeas ago. I ask again, who are you?"

"I'm James Potter. I can prove it, please."

"Then do so."

James looked towards Snape. His gaze flickered only briefly to Harry and there was no emotion on his face when he did—no joy, no relief, no shock… nothing that Harry might have expected from a man seeing his son for the first time in almost a decade and a half. He showed more emotion looking at Snape, lips drawing back in a sneer of distaste. Snape narrowed his eyes, raising his wand.

But all James said was, "Fifth of November, seventy-nine."

Everyone looked to Snape, whose breath hitched.

"Severus," Dumbledore called, "does that date mean something to you?"

Snape nodded jerkily.

Dumbledore didn't ask what. "Is it something anyone other than James Potter would know?"

Harry saw Snape's tongue dart out briefly to wet his lips, saw his fingers twitching on his wand, the muscle clenching in his temple. Eventually, he said, "I can't be certain… but probably no one else alive."

"No one else does," James said, and a somewhat vicious look came over his face as he added, "Lily never told, so unless you went bragging about it to your mates—oh wait, you don't have any of those, do you?"

Snape went white. His face twisted furiously and he stepped forward, brandishing his wand in a silent spell. James cringed away even before he finished casting, and several Slytherin students slid off the bench under the safety of the table, but Dumbledore threw up a shield that absorbed the spell.

"Severus, control yourself!"

Snape jerked his wand down, grinding his teeth so hard Harry could hear it.

"What happened on the fifth of November seventy-nine?" Harry asked.

"I think we ought to take this elsewhere," McGonagall said.

"Yes," Dumbledore agreed. "Severus, go wait in my office. Minerva, take Mr Potter to the hospital wing. Poppy, would you contact Kirith Karpel. Everyone—" he gave the rest of the hall a warm smile, and the Slytherins still under the table dared to peek their heads out again "—please finish your meal and return to your dormitories. I'm sure many of you still have packing to do before the train leaves tomorrow."

Harry scowled at Snape's back as he set off without once looking around, but followed. He was tempted to demand an explanation right then and there, but realised that having his family drama out in front of the whole school wasn't the best idea. Besides, McGonagall was already walking James out, and Harry had every intention of going wherever he did.

But out in the Entrance Hall, Dumbledore fell back to walk in step with Harry, putting a hand on his shoulder to keep him from hurrying forward to join James and McGonagall.

"I think you should go up to my office with Professor Snape, Harry."

"But that's my dad!"

"I know," Dumbledore said quietly, "and I can only imagine how you're feeling right now, but we have no idea what he's been through or where he's been. You're a stranger to him; I think it would be best if you wait until I have spoken to him and Kirith has checked him over."

Harry stopped, although all he wanted to do was run after James and ask why he'd barely even looked at Harry all this time, why he hadn't even glanced back since walking out the Great Hall. He felt such joy at the first sight of James, then fury when he realised it might not be real, then relief that it was, but now he was afraid that he'd got his father back and it wouldn't matter because James didn't care about him.

"Do you think he'd hurt me?"

"I don't know," Dumbledore said regrettably. "Go with Professor Snape now."

Harry nodded, giving James' back one last longing look before turning after Snape, who'd elected to take the long route to Dumbledore's office rather than remain with the others even past the Hospital Wing. Snape didn't look at him as he jogged to catch up.

"What happened on the fifth of November?" Harry asked him and, when Snape didn't answer, added, "I could make you tell me."

Snape whirled on him and Harry stopped short, wary in the face of such anger.

"Doing so would make you no better than the Death Eaters who force information from people with the Imperius Curse. Is that what you want to be?"

Harry shook his head, feeling cold suddenly. "N-no, I didn't mean—"

"You didn't _think_ ," Snape spat. "Having power does not give you the right to force things from people just because you feel entitled. Hold your tongue until we reach the headmaster's office."

He stalked off and Harry followed, chastised and angry, both at himself and Snape. He didn't like being told off, but Snape had a point. He hadn't considered that forcing someone to tell him something was bad, he'd only thought that he had a right to know whether Snape wanted to tell him or not.

They said nothing for the rest of the trip up to Dumbledore's office, where Snape ordered Harry to sit and then proceeded to pace the office. Harry slumped in a chair, thoroughly miserable now.

He looked up a trill from Fawkes and started when the phoenix left his perch and swooped over to land on Harry's knee. Harry sat perfectly still, resisting the urge to knock the bird away. Not having an owl, and rarely sending letters, most of his experience with birds was shooing away pigeons on the streets of London. He highly doubted Fawkes would appreciate being treated in the same manner.

"Pet him," Snape said stiffly.

Cautiously, Harry did, stroking the feathers on Fawkes' head and marvelling at how soft and warm they were. It was oddly soothing, too; he soon found himself relaxing into the chair, some of his muddled emotions draining away.

"I'm sorry for threatening to make you tell me," he said after a few moments, looking up as Snape's pacing brought him within sight.

Snape glanced at him then continued his movement. "Apology accepted."

"Will you tell me, please?"

He heard an annoyed huff, but Snape answered. "I'll decide whether you need to know when the headmaster returns."

"What's it got to do with him? He didn't even know what Dad meant when he said that date. It's got something to do with you and my mum, don't I have a right to know?"

"Parents are entitled to some secrets from their children just as much as children keep secrets from their parents."

"I wouldn't keep secrets from my parents," Harry countered. "I mean, I won't now."

 _Oh yes you will. You'll not speak about me, and we both know you won't tell anyone about that nasty little demon deal you made._

Snape stopped pacing. He started to speak, then glanced around at the portraits and changed his mind. They all looked asleep to Harry, but perhaps Snape thought some of them were faking.

"You will keep secrets," Snape said instead. "All children do, just ask your friends. No one shares everything with any one person in the world."

Harry frowned at that, wondering if it was really true. He might not have told anyone about the demon deal, but maybe he would if he had a real parent around, or if he fell in love with someone. Not that that seemed likely when he'd never even had a crush, but you were supposed to trust your significant other with those sorts of things, weren't you?

It seemed to take an age for Dumbledore to finally show up. When he did, the first thing he said was, "Harry, would you please give Professor Snape and me a moment to talk alone."

Fawkes returned to his perch, leaving Harry with his hand half raised and gaping at the headmaster. "What? Why?"

"I just need a few moments."

"But it's my dad, why aren't you talking to me about it?"

"Mr Evans, wait outside."

It wasn't a request anymore. Harry looked between the two adults, then got up and stormed out, slamming the door behind him. On the landing, he pressed his ear to the door, but Dumbledore flicked his wand at it and no sound penetrated the wood. Harry could still see through, but that didn't help when he couldn't read lips, and Snape had his back to him.

He saw Dumbledore shake his head with exasperation at something Snape said, and Snape rubbed both temples. Dumbledore poured him a small glass of some drink whose label Harry couldn't make out and Snape gave it a dark look, but drank it. Dumbledore put away bottle and glass, Snape went to stand at the window, his back to the room and hands clenching on the windowsill, and then Dumbledore opened the door with a wave of his wand.

"Am I allowed to know what's going on now?" Harry asked, half sarcasm and half bitterness.

"Please have a seat, Harry."

Harry threw himself into one, folding his arms over his chest and looking between Dumbledore's calm face and Snape's stiff back. "Well? What's going on with my dad? Why isn't he dead? Where's he been all this time? Is he okay? When can I see him?"

Dumbledore settled into his own chair. "Physically, James is fairly well. Kirith is still finishing her examination of his mind, but he seems in surprisingly good health. As for where he's been, it would appear that on the night Voldemort attacked Godric's Hollow, James wasn't home. By chance, he left the house shortly before Voldemort attacked, which saved his life. Unfortunately, he was captured by a Death Eater that very same night and has been held prisoner until today, when he finally managed to escape."

Harry's arms fell, anger fading in the face of this revelation. "Who held him? Why didn't he escape in February?" His breath hitched. "Was it my fault? Did I let the one who captured him go?"

"Don't blame yourself," Dumbledore said, and Harry sank back in his chair, feeling sick. "You couldn't have known, Harry."

 _But did the Assistant?_ the voice wondered.

"Who was it?"

"Aurors are on their way to arrest him at this—"

" _Who was it?_ "

Dumbledore leaned forwards slightly. "Harry, please listen carefully. The culprit has a child here at Hogwarts, and I don't want you to blame them for their father's actions. They are not responsible for it, do you understand?"

"Malfoy," Harry said, and a slight twitch in Dumbledore's eyes said he was right. "It was Lucius Malfoy. In that cellar."

Dumbledore straightened. "What cellar?"

"His private cellar. Malfoy—Draco—told me about it when I visited last summer. He said it was completely empty and he didn't know why his father kept it private, but there were spells or something, weren't there? Hiding James, or a secret room or something." He slammed a fist against the chair. "I could have found him. I was right there. If I'd had this eye already—"

"Stop," Dumbledore ordered. "Harry, you could not have known. This is not your fault. Lucius Malfoy is the only person to blame for what happened to James."

Harry shook, fighting to keep his magic from lashing out. He'd spent a whole night in the very same house as his father and had no idea.

"Why'd he leave home that night?" he asked, staring at the desk rather than look up. "I thought he and Mum were safe—they thought they were safe—under the Fidelius Charm. Why'd he leave the house?" A horrifying thought came to him and he snapped his gaze up. "Did he know? Did he abandon me and Mum to die?"

If that was true, Lucius could have him back, once Harry had extorted his own revenge.

But Dumbledore was quick to answer, "No, he did not knowingly abandon you to Voldemort."

" _Knowingly?_ So he did abandon us?" When Dumbledore didn't answer, Harry looked from him to Snape and back again. "Did he walk out on us? Were they splitting up? Does this have something to do with November the fifth?"

"In part, yes," Dumbledore said quietly. "Severus, I think it's time you explained."

Snape sighed, but didn't turn around. "On the fifth of November seventy-nine, your mother and I had an affair."

"She _cheated_? With _you_?"

Snape nodded stiffly.

"Lily didn't confess this to James until the night Voldemort attacked," Dumbledore said. "He left the house in a fit of anger, but I would not say he abandoned you."

"He left us!" Harry cried.

"He was angry and needed to think," Dumbledore corrected calmly. "It's very likely he would have come back had events not turned out as they did."

"You don't know that."

"Nor do you know he wouldn't."

Harry couldn't contest that.

"There is something more. Severus?"

Harry looked to Snape. He still hadn't turned around and he didn't speak now until Dumbledore prompted, "Tell him. He deserves to hear it from you, Severus."

Snape sighed and, finally, turned around. He folded his arms over his chest and his expression was unlike Harry had seen on him before—wary, apologetic, almost… afraid?

"Our affair had consequences."

"What consequences?"

Snape looked at him pointedly. Harry stared at him, then shook his head.

"No."

"Evans—Harry—"

Around the room, all Dumbledore's strange little objects trembled on their tables. "No, you're not—you're not saying—that you're…"

"I'm your father."

" _No!_ "

The window behind Snape smashed and he staggered forward with a cry of pain as glass cut across and sunk into his back. Harry saw one shard impale a beetle on the floor, the same beetle he'd turned blue in History of Magic all those weeks ago.

"Control yourself!" Dumbledore commanded, rising hurriedly and going to Snape's aid.

 _Oh, this is priceless. A day ago you were an orphan; now you've got two dads!_

"He's NOT my dad!" Harry yelled at it, then fixed an angry gaze on Snape and snarled, "You're _not_ my father."

Snape said nothing, leaning on Dumbledore's desk now while the headmaster carefully used a Summoning Charm to get pieces of glass from his back.

"Say it's not true! Tell me it's a lie, tell me right now!"

"Telling you that won't make it any less true."

"IT'S NOT TRUE! YOU'RE NOT MY DAD, DAD'S DON'T LEAVE THEIR KIDS TO GET BEAT UP!"

It was one thing for Snape to have left him with the Dursleys if he was just a teacher, just an old friend of his mother—Harry could understand that; after all, why should he take on someone else's child? But the idea that Snape was his father and still chose to leave him there…

 _Abandoned,_ said the voice in his head, not laughing now. _Abandoned by your mother, by your stepfather, now by your true father. You were abandoned by Jia, and recall how quick your other friends were to abandon you when they thought you a dark wizard attacking students, even if they did come back. Sirius and Remus will abandon you too when they find out you're not the child they thought you were. They won't be there tomorrow to pick you up from London and you'll be back out on the street._

It was too much. He leapt out of his chair and ran for the door, vanishing it when he found it locked, and hurtled down the spiral staircase. He vanished the gargoyle, too, and ran for the stairs. He heard Snape and Dumbledore yelling behind him but ignored them. He knocked through a group of Gryffindors returning to their tower, skidded around a corner, reached the stairs, and leapt down them. More stairs and corridors later, he reached the Hospital Wing and burst through, pausing only long enough to find the single occupied bed.

James sat with his legs hanging over the edge, Pomfrey and Kirith talking with him, and McGonagall at the foot, listening. They all looked around at his entrance, startled, but all Harry's attention was on James.

"Tell me it's not true."

James gave him a pitying look. "I'm sorry—"

"No! Tell me it's not true, tell me it's a lie! A prank! Sirius said you like pranks, tell me this is just a joke!"

James shook his head. "It's not. I'm sorry it came out like this, but I thought you deserved to know."

"Harry—" said a voice behind him, and he whirled. Snape, running up after him, went crashing back into the wall.

"Stay the hell away from me!"

His voice cracked on the last word, a sob spilling out of him. He saw Dumbledore approaching and stepped back, shaking his head, then turned invisible. He fled again, this time taking to the air.

He Wished for his trunk as he went, already packed ready for tomorrow's journey, and Wished it small enough to fit in his pocket, then broke through the first window he came across that was big enough to fit through. He flew across the ground, heading straight for the school boundaries, and once he was past them he teleported away.

* * *

James sat on his bed, legs crossed, hands in his lap. The Hospital Wing should have been a comfort in its familiarity. He hadn't been here in years, but he'd spent enough time in the Hospital Wing as a student, getting hexed by Slytherins or friendly fights with Sirius getting out of hand or accidents while roaming the forest in his Animagus form.

But there was no comfort. He wanted his room at Malfoy Manor, the familiar comfort of the plain walls and dim candles, his bed and books and the comfort of his Master being close by. Here, there were too many windows and too many people he didn't trust. Some small part of him said he should; Dumbledore, McGonagall, Pomfrey—they were familiar old faces and he knew they were good people, but he still didn't trust them. At least that Kirith woman was gone; he'd been terrified her examination would discover the Bond with his Master, but she'd not detected a thing.

The worst part had been dealing with Kingsley Shacklebolt and Rufus Scrimgeour, the Aurors who'd come when Dumbledore reported James' presence. Kingsley had been nice enough, but Scrimgeour made James uncomfortable, and he disliked them just for being Aurors. Once they'd interviewed him, they'd set off immediately to Malfoy Manor to arrest his Master.

They'd already got him; James could feel his Master's fear echoing down the Bond that connected them. James knew it had to be done, but he didn't like it. He hated the thought of his Master being stuck in Azkaban with madmen and Dementors.

McGonagall had returning to her duties within the school, and he was glad for that. She'd kept looking at him like she was about to burst into tears. Dumbledore was gone too, but he'd be back. He'd only gone to inform Sirius and Remus.

Another one James didn't trust was Snape, who was behind the curtains of another bed as Madam Pomfrey treated him. James' Master had never discouraged his hatred of Snape, though he had a mild fondness for the man himself. James knew Snape's loyalty to the Dark Lord was suspect and it was one of his tasks to watch Snape closely to determine whose side he was really on.

He looked around at the sound of the door opening and felt his heart skip a beat when Dumbledore showed in Sirius and Remus. _Blood traitor and animal,_ whispered his Master's training. Filthy, treacherous beasts that ought to be put down. But he couldn't say that. He had to pretend he still thought of them as friends.

Sirius and Remus halted just inside the Hospital Wing, gaping at him. James tried to force a smile, but knew it came out weak; that was alright, they all thought he'd fought his way free just this evening. He wasn't supposed to be hale, hearty, and happy, which was a good thing because he couldn't fake it.

Sirius staggered forwards, never taking his gaze off James, still staring like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. Remus followed more warily.

"James?" Sirius breathed, reaching the bed. "That's really you?"

He reached out and James automatically withdrew from him. Sirius pulled back his hand, anger flickering over his face.

"What did that bastard do to you?"

"He's not a bastard," James snapped, then remembered he wasn't supposed to defend him and looked away. Damnit, his Master would be furious if he messed this up. "I mean…"

"It's alright, James," Dumbledore said.

" _Alright?_ " Sirius repeated, outraged, but faltered at Dumbledore's stern look.

"Stockholm Syndrome?" Remus asked, and Dumbledore nodded.

As if what James felt for his Master was anything so stupid. So _Muggle_.

Sirius looked at him with an expression of pity and determination. "Don't worry, Prongs. We'll get you back to sorts. You'll come around soon."

James almost snorted with derision. How had he been friends with this man before? And those nicknames were so _childish_.

But he just forced another weak smile and said, "Thanks, Padfoot."

Sirius grinned at that. Remus smiled as well, though less brightly.

The rustle of curtains across the room drew their attention to Pomfrey returning to her office, leaving open the curtains hiding Snape, who stood by the bed doing up the last few buttons on his robe. He immediately scowled at the sight of Sirius and Remus, a look Sirius returned just as hatefully, fingering the wand peeking out his pocket.

"You're still alive then," Sirius called over. "Pity."

"Try wishing harder," Snape replied. "Maybe it'll come true next time."

"It would if Harry wished it."

James frowned at that, confused. Was Sirius referring to that outburst of magic Harry performed against Snape? James' Master had said there was something unusual and powerful about Harry's magic, but he hadn't explained what.

"Then clearly he doesn't want me dead. That must be such a disappointment for you, Black."

"He'll come around once he gets over the shock of learning you're…"

Snape's lip curled. "That I'm his father," he said, relishing Sirius' flinch. "Don't worry, I've already picked your replacement."

"Replacement? What the fuck are you talking about?"

Snape answered like Sirius was an idiot. "I did not choose you as godfather, and I'm under no delusions that you have any inclination to remain so now that you know the truth."

"Like _hell_ ," Sirius snarled, drawing his wand. " _I'm_ Harry's godfather, no matter who fathered him. I'm not letting you pick some bastard like Malfoy."

James' hands clenched on his lap.

"Oh yes," Snape drawled, "because I would certainly pick someone who's about to get thrown in Azkaban. That's exactly what Harry needs, another absent godfather."

"It's no worse than being an absent father," Remus said, and Dumbledore hurriedly moved to stand between him and Snape as Snape went for his wand.

"That's enough," Dumbledore said firmly. "Wands away, all of you."

Slowly, Sirius and Snape did so.

"Severus, if you're healed, return to your duties. Harry's belongings will need to be collected."

"What should I tell the other students?"

"If you don't wish to reveal your parenthood—" Snape gave him a dark look that Dumbledore ignored "—simply inform them that it is James Potter, we're still investigating the circumstances, and Harry is going home separately. We don't want his running away becoming public knowledge."

"What about Draco?"

"He didn't know," James spoke up finally. He'd told the Aurors already, but he had to defend them. His Master would not be happy if James let his wife and son get accused of conspiracy without speaking up for them. "Neither him or—or his mother knew about me until today."

His Master had said he could use their names now, but that was more effort than James could manage right then. He'd never been allowed to talk of his Master's family before unless his Master brought the topic up, and the memory of punishments for doing so was fresh enough to stall him even now he had permission.

Sirius snorted derisively. "Don't defend my bitch of a cousin, James. I'm sure she knew all about—"

James lunged at him, landing smoothly on his feet and grabbing a fistful of Sirius' robes. "Don't you dare talk about my Master's wife like that!"

"James!" Remus grabbed him, but James wrenched away, smacking the animal's hands away. Sirius staggered back, staring at James in shock, and Remus raised his hands in surrender.

"James, calm yourself," Dumbledore said gently.

James turning away from them all as he fought to get himself under control. He hadn't known this would be so hard. He had to do better. If they found out why he was really here, his Master would angrier than the one time James stole his wand and cursed him, back before they were Bonded. The scars on his back seemed to ache just at the memory of it.

Worse, the Dark Lord would punish James' Master for James' failure. James couldn't be responsible for that.

"Master?" Sirius said, sounding stunned.

"I have to call him that," James muttered, not turning around, not ready to face them all yet.

"You needn't anymore," Dumbledore told him. "But I understand it'll take time to break these habits. Don't fret yourself over it."

"If you're so fond of him, why did you admit who kept you hostage?" Snape asked. "Why escape at all?"

"I didn't admit it," James snapped, lifting a hand to his right collarbone. "I escaped because I saw an opportunity." This, at least, he had a good explanation; his Master had made sure to create a plausible lie about this. "The Dark Lord came. When my ma- Lu- went to him, he was in such a hurry he didn't shut my door properly. I knew the Dark Lord would kill me as soon as—as he told him about me, so I took the chance to run."

He finally turned to face them again. Snape still looked suspicious, Remus was pitying, and Sirius heading towards angry again. Dumbledore showed no expression; he'd heard all this before.

"Does Voldemort knows about you?" Remus asked.

"Probably by now. My mas- he said he was keeping me for the Dark Lord to kill. He said he'd be well rewarded for it."

"Fourteen years is a long time to keep someone," Snape noted. James said nothing.

"He tortured you, didn't he?" Sirius asked, then, before James could answer, his face twisted with horrified fury. "Did he—did…?"

"Did he what?" James asked, no idea what Sirius was getting at.

"I think what Black's unable to bring himself to ask," Snape said, with what seemed like grim pleasure at doing it himself, "is whether you were Lucius' trollop."

James felt his face heat up, but straightened his back and glared at Snape. "My Master's marriage—"

"He's not your fucking master!" Sirius burst out. "He's a sick bastard who locked you up for fourteen years!"

James stared at him, clenching his teeth, hands shaking at the effort it took not to hit the other man.

"Sirius," Remus murmured, taking his hand, "calm down. It's not his fault."

Sirius jerked free of him, turning away and running both hands through his hair, then kicked one of the empty beds.

"Is that a yes, then?" Snape asked.

Sirius whirled, lunging at him with the apparent intention of throttling Snape with his bare hands. Snape staggered back, bringing his wand up, but Remus grabbed Sirius and pulled him back before he reached him.

"Severus, leave," Dumbledore ordered. "Send Draco to my office; I expect we'll hear from Narcissa soon enough anyway."

Snape nodded once and stalked out without another glance at the rest of them.

"You're not stopping me from being godfather!" Sirius yelled after him. Snape paused at the door just long enough to give him a dismissive look, then left, slamming the door behind him.

Sirius looked to Dumbledore. "He can't stop me being godfather, can he?"

"I'm uncertain, but as long as Harry wants you to be, I don't believe Severus would even try to."

"Right," Sirius said, shooting a distrustful look at the doors Snape just vanished through.

"You and Remus should return home," Dumbledore went on. "Harry may turn up there."

Sirius nodded.

"What about James?" Remus asked.

"A psychologist is coming around in the morning, someone Kirith recommends," Dumbledore said. James scowled; he didn't need or want some head shrink trying to get into his mind, but Dumbledore and Kirith insisted. "He'll stay here for now. Long term arrangements will have to be discussed."

"He can—" Sirius began, then stopped. He frowned, nodded, then cautiously approached James. He lifted a hand and James eyed it warily, but Sirius placed it on his shoulder, squeezing. He twitched as if to move more, but refrained. "I'm glad to see you again, Prongs."

"So am I," James lied.

"We'll come back tomorrow," Remus said, looking to Dumbledore, who nodded agreeably.

James nodded, trying to look pleased by this, and watched them turn to go.

"Get some rest," Dumbledore told him before going with the two men.

At the door, Sirius stopped, spinning back to look at James, who tensed.

"You never did answer. Did Lucius…?" He still couldn't say it, but gestured vaguely and James got the point.

"No. He's not interested in men like that."

"Right. Good."

They left. Just before the door shut behind them, James heard Remus asked Dumbledore, "How _did_ you know who took him?"

James didn't hear Dumbledore's answer, but he already knew it. He pulled the curtains around his bed, just in case a student turned up with some malady, and lay down, lifting his hand to his collarbone. He couldn't feel the scars through his robes, but he traced them anyway, the words he'd carved into himself with a blood quill, over and over and over until they were etched into his mind as well as his skin.

 _Property of Lucius Malfoy._

* * *

Severus delivered a concerned and curious Draco, and his luggage, to Dumbledore's office just as Narcissa stepped through the fireplace.

"Mother!"

"Shall I leave you two alone?" Dumbledore asked, standing by his desk.

Narcissa looked tempted to say yes, but with stiff civility said, "You likely know more than I do currently. You may as well stay. Severus, too."

"What's going on?" Draco asked worriedly, looking around at them all.

"Sit down, Draco," Narcissa said, taking a seat for herself. Draco sat, never taking his gaze off her. Dumbledore settled behind his desk, but Severus stayed on his feet, leaning against a bookcase.

Narcissa, never one to beat around the bush, looked at Draco and said, "Your father has been arrested."

Draco sucked in a sharp breath. "What for?"

Narcissa looked as if she was sucking on a lemon. "He thought it was a good idea to lock a man in the cellar for fifteen years."

Draco looked baffled for a moment, then gasped, looking to Snape and Dumbledore. "Does this have something to do with James Potter?"

They all nodded. Draco leant back in his chair, even paler than usual. "It's really him then? Evans' father. He's alive. Because Father kept him locked up all this time?"

"Yes," Narcissa said. "Potter escaped today, and the Aurors arrested your father this evening. I didn't want you to read about it in the paper tomorrow morning. I'm taking you home tonight."

Draco nodded absently, but looked to Dumbledore. "Does Evans know all this?"

"Yes."

Draco grimaced. No doubt he realised his chances of gaining Harry's favour, slim as they were already, had just vanished.

"Are we leaving now?" he asked Narcissa.

"If you've everything ready."

Draco nodded, looking around at his trunk. "Professor Snape said I should bring everything."

"Then we'll leave. Your owl will find his own way."

There was little else to say. Draco and Narcissa prepared to go, leaving through the fireplace, but as Draco took a handful of floo powder from Dumbledore's beehive-shaped pot, he looked to Severus.

"Sir, will you make sure Evans knows I had no idea about this?"

Severus nodded, though he knew he wouldn't speak to Harry anytime soon. Even when they did, Severus didn't look forward to the conversation they'd have.

When Draco and Narcissa were gone, Severus asked Dumbledore, "What's happening with Potter?"

Dumbledore leant back in his chair. "What do you mean?"

"Don't play dumb with me, headmaster," Severus snapped, moving forward and gripping the back of a chair. "He's spent fourteen years as Lucius Malfoy's… _pet_. You heard the way Potter spoke about him, and the Dark Lord knows about him. Are we really to believe that after so long Potter miraculously managed to escape _now_? Right under the Dark Lord's nose?"

"The circumstances are suspect, however I will not treat James as an enemy. Don't look at me like that," Dumbledore scolded him. "Kirith found no evidence of active spells or enchantments on James, dark or otherwise, and neither did I. She'll be back tomorrow to do a second check, but she believes all his attachment to Lucius is psychological, not magical. James has been very violently abused and—"

"He looked healthy enough to me," Severus muttered, rolling his shoulders as his own recently healed wounds twitched.

"You did not see his scars," Dumbledore replied. "Nor the results when Kirith checked for dark magic cast on him, but I know you noticed how he cringed from anyone who raised a wand against him."

Severus straightened up, looking away with a scowl. He had. As a teenager, he'd have relished James Potter cowering in fear from him; today he'd found it surprisingly unfulfilling.

"I won't be inviting James to Order meetings until we've determined more of his mental state and interviewed Lucius, but for now he must be treated with compassion and understanding."

Severus didn't respond to that, refusing to agree to give any such emotion to James Potter but not refuting it either. "And what do you plan to do with him? He can't remain in the Hospital Wing forever."

"I don't know," Dumbledore admitted. "Harry has not made things easy."

" _Harry_ isn't responsible for Potter."

Dumbledore looked over his glasses at him. "I am aware of that, Severus. However, living with Sirius and Remus would be the obvious option, but it wouldn't be fair on anyone to settle James with his old friends only for Harry to come back and say he doesn't want to live with James, nor could we tell Harry that he has no right to an opinion on the matter. Something else will have to be figured out, but it'll wait until we know more about James' mental state."

Severus had his own opinions on Potter's mental state, but he doubted Dumbledore would care for them.

With nothing else to say, he turned to leave,

"Severus."

He stopped at the door, turning to look back at the headmaster.

"You won't try to stop Sirius being Harry's godfather."

"As long as Black doesn't forsake him, and Harry doesn't object to him." He started to go again, but Dumbledore called his name once more, and he sighed irritably. "I do have things to do, headmaster."

"I was just curious as to who you would have chosen for Harry's godfather."

Severus didn't look back. "No one. No one at all."

He let the door slam shut behind him and headed for the dungeons.

His path took him past Minerva's office. He paused outside the closed door, looked around, then stepped closer. Listening closely, he heard the faint sound of movement inside. He lifted a hand, hesitated, then knocked.

"Come in."

He entered and found Minerva rifling through a filing cabinet. She looked around, pausing in surprise.

"Severus. How's your back?"

"Fine," he answered tersely. "I have a favour to ask you."

He had to get it out before he lost his nerve. She pushed the drawer shut and moved to her desk, gesturing at the chair on the far side. Severus shook his head so she remained standing as well.

"What sort of favour?"

"If Black rejects Harry, would you be his godmother?"

It was a rare pleasure to see Minerva gobsmacked. Normally he'd relish it, but today he was too tense.

"You want me to…?"

"He trusts you. He likes you. Right now he hates me, Minerva, but he's still just a child. He needs someone to look out for him and I don't trust Black not to abandon him once he's over the shock of Potter's return."

Minerva sat. "I'm sure he won't."

"Perhaps," Severus said, but he didn't believe it. "Will you accept?"

She scoffed. "Of course I will. Did you really think I wouldn't?"

"I didn't know if you wanted the responsibility. He's difficult to handle."

She sighed. "Severus, don't take this the wrong way, but thinking of children as responsibilities is exactly why you have so much trouble with them."

He folded his arms over his chest and drummed the fingers of one hand against his biceps.

"I'm a teacher; how else am I supposed to think of them?"

She gave him an exasperated look. "As people. Especially when one of those children is your son."

Severus turned away. "According to Harry, he's not. He's been functionally orphaned since Lily died; there's no reason for that to change now."

* * *

The morning headline announced Potter's existence and Lucius' arrest, but Harry and Draco's absence from the school meant there was no trouble over it, just an awful lot of gossip. Severus was more glad than usual to finally see the students gone. After the past year's events, and especially the past day's, he was extremely grateful to finally get a bit of peace and quiet in the castle.

Black and Lupin turned up in the afternoon. Severus met them outside the Hospital Wing after conferring with Poppy on what potions were left in stock. She'd had few enough injuries in the past week to get a head start on stocktaking. Some could be kept for next year, but others would go off by September; it let Severus know what he'd need to brew over the summer.

"Severus," Lupin greeted politely. Severus gave him a cold look.

"I assume there's no been no word from Harry."

Lupin shook his head.

"No thanks to you," Black sneered.

Severus stared at him until Black shifted warily and eyed him suspiciously, then stepped past and headed on his way. He had his own end of term arrangements to deal with.

It took him a week. Black and Lupin were annoyingly common features around the castle in that time, and Potter remained resident in the Hospital Wing. The psychologist who came apparently decided he was too mental to diagnose in one day.

Not that that was the phrasing Dumbledore used, but it was the general idea.

Severus fortunately rarely had to see them, busy in the dungeons sorting out the store cupboards, tidying out his office and classroom, and arranging his own rooms. But the day before he intended to go home, Potter turned up at his office door, alone. Severus was glad not to have to deal with Black or Lupin, but suspicious; every time he'd glimpsed Potter over the past week, he'd always been accompanied by someone, whether his old friends or one of the other staff members.

Severus was writing out a list of things to do when he came back in August, but at Potter's appearance he laid down his quill and reached for the wand sitting on the edge of his desk.

"Going to hex me, Snape?" Potter asked, lingering in the doorway. "You couldn't do anything nastier than what my—than what's already been done to me."

"I wouldn't be sure of that, Potter. What do you want? Where's whoever's supposed to be babysitting you right now?"

"I don't have a babysitter, and I wanted to talk to you."

"I don't see what we have to talk about. Piss off."

"I want to talk about Harry."

"No," Severus said bluntly.

"He's my stepson, I have a right to know—"

"You have no rights," Severus interrupted, standing. Potter tensed, hand dropping to the wand at his hip. "You've spent fourteen years in a cellar, Potter. You've got no relationship with Harry at all."

"I spent over a year changing his nappies and teaching him to walk and talk," Potter said. "That's more than you've ever done, isn't it? Did he ever call _you_ 'dada'?"

Severus burst out of his seat, wand coming up. Potter brought his own wand up, holding it defensively, but backed up a step.

"You know nothing of what I've done for Harry."

"I know you weren't there for him," Potter said, eyes fixed on Snape's wand. "Sirius and Remus told me, and I saw the news articles. Harry grew up with Lily's bitch of a sister and her husband. They abused him. They're the reason he lost the sight in one eye. Why didn't you take him in?"

"I don't have to explain myself to you," Severus snarled.

"Remus said Harry hated you last year, when he was teaching here, but he only found out you're his father last week. What'd you do to make him hate you?"

Severus flourished his wand. Potter dropped his own and staggered back with a pained cry, hitting the wall outside the office and sliding down it, staring at his hands as they twisted at the wrist until they faced the wrong way.

Severus moved around the desk, wand still pointed at Potter as he slowly approached.

"I said, I don't have to explain myself to pathetic, beaten little cowards like you, Potter."

Potter grimaced, but tilted his head back and looked up at him. "Is this it?"

"I assure you I can do much worse."

"I know, but is this why Harry hates you? Because you still favour the Dark Arts? Because you're still loyal to the Dark Lord? Is that why you didn't help him in February?"

Severus froze. "What?"

"My Master told me all about it. You were there, and you never raised a finger to help Harry. You didn't speak up for him. Would you have let him die and rejoiced with the rest at his demise?"

"So this is it," Severus said. "This is why they let you go. To determine my loyalty?"

Potter laughed. Severus frowned, stepped back, wary now.

"Do you think you're really that important?" Potter asked, grinning at him. "Snivellus?"

"You piece of—"

"Shut up, _Snivellus_. I might be a beaten little coward, but at least I've got an excuse. Where's yours? Fourteen years and you still went running straight back to the Dark Lord, looking for someone bigger and tougher than you to hide behind."

"You have no idea what you're talking about, Potter."

Potter's grin didn't falter. "My master would never just let me go. He always kept me waiting for the Dark Lord. It was always his intention to hand me over to be killed. That day I escaped—it wasn't the first time I tried, but it was the last time I'd ever get the chance. I'd have died that day if I hadn't got away. But you think they just released me, to spy on _you_?" He laughed. "You're not that important, Snivellus. You never were. Lily recognised it, and now Harry recognised it, too."

Severus' hand shook with anger. "Lily thought I was important enough to shag when you weren't there," he spat.

"That was a mistake," Potter said, but his grin faded. "She told me all about it, Snape. She regretted it as soon as it was done."

"Not enough to tell you about it until two years later. Not enough to get rid of the child we made."

"Because she knew a child shouldn't pay for her mistakes." He leant his head against the wall, his expression cool now. "But he paid for yours, didn't he? Is there _anything_ you've done for Harry that wasn't a mistake?"

Severus brandished his wand, but before he could complete his incantation—

"Severus!"

He lowered his wand with an irritable sigh, stepping back as Dumbledore hurried up to them, wand already out. He crouched by Potter, carefully examining his hands before turning angry eyes up to Severus. Severus avoided meeting them.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Nothing he doesn't deserve," Severus muttered.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dumbledore's face grow thunderous.

"It's okay, headmaster," Potter said, drawing a startled, suspicious look from Severus. "It's not that bad. I've dealt with worse. The counter-curse is simple enough."

"That you've suffered worse is no excuse for Severus' behaviour," Dumbledore said, but his voice was softer than when he spoke to Severus.

Severus made a sharp gesture with his wand and spoke the counter-curse, and Potter grimaced and whined as his hands twisted back to their normal position. Dumbledore helped him to his feet and summoned his dropped wand.

"You should return to the Hospital Wing and get Poppy to check on them, just in case."

Potter nodded and gave the headmaster a weak smile. His expression was distinctly cooler when he looked at Severus, but he said nothing, just set off.

"You've no excuse for attacking him, Severus," Dumbledore said, his voice cold enough to make Severus want to squirm like a recalcitrant student. "I think you should go home tonight,"

"Fine," he snapped, and spun on his heel, stalked into his office, and slammed the door shut.

* * *

Six hours later he arrived on the doorstep of his house on Spinner's End. It was dark, wet, and miserable, and he swore as he dispelled the locking charms on his front door. When he finally got it open, he vanished the pile of junk mail just inside, dragged his luggage through, and kicked the door shut.

He left his trunk dropped in the middle of the living room, lit the stumpy candles in the lamp, and banished his cloak to its hook by the door, heading into the kitchen. He dug out a dusty bottle of vodka and felt a lot better after downing a couple of shots.

He took his belongings upstairs, ran a bath, and unpacked as it filled. He was tempted to summon the vodka and drink as he bathed, but it had a tendency to make him drowsy and he didn't fancy drowning in the bath. Potter, Black, and Lupin would have a field day with that.

He picked a book instead, levitating it above the tub as he soaked, but by the time the water grew tepid he'd only read one page, and that several times. His mind kept drifting to his conversation with Potter, and to Harry, and it just made him angry—at Potter and himself, because Potter was right. He'd failed Harry, and what he'd done in the past few years didn't make up for all the things he should have done for Harry.

He climbed out the bath, dried, and then summoned the vodka, intending to crawl into bed with it, but it didn't come. He frowned, listening, but couldn't hear it crashing into the doors. Cursing, he pulled on a dressing gown and stomped downstairs, muttering irritably as he went.

He'd doused the candle lamp earlier, knowing better than to waste candles or risk burning his house down, so he lit his wand with _Lumos_ —and then froze. There was a figure in his armchair, a familiar figure, but one he'd never thought he'd see there. He might almost have thought it was an apparition, but he knew his own mind well enough to distinguish the real from the imaginary.

The light of his wand reflected off alabaster skin as Lord Voldemort set down the bottle of vodka Severus tried to summon, and red eyes gleamed in the surrounding darkness as he looked up at him.

"Hello, Severus."


	21. Chapter 21

**Chapter 21**

"So you care nothing for your son."

Severus coughed blood onto his threadbare carpet, squeezed his eyes shut with a grimace as Voldemort's bare feet paced slowly past him, wishing he was dressed in something more substantial than just his dressing gown.

"No, my lord," he wheezed.

"You will not stand in my way when the time comes that I will kill him."

"No."

"You will not seek to hide him from me, to protect him from whatever harm I wish to inflict, to aid Albus Dumbledore in keeping the boy from me."

"No."

"Then perhaps I won't kill you after all, Severus."

The stabbing pain in Severus' chest eased and he inhaled deeply, then fell into a coughing fit. More blood spilled onto his carpet, but afterwards he could breathe easier and felt less light-headed.

"T-thank you, my lord."

"My mercy is tentative, Severus," Voldemort said. "Your loyalty is still questionable. You have the summer to prove to me that you truly deserve my trust. Fail, and Albus Dumbledore will have to find a new teacher for Potions."

With effort, Severus forced himself to his knees, rested his shaking hands on his thighs, and bowed his head. "I am yours to command, my lord."

* * *

 _Daily Prophet_ sales over the next month exploded. Between James' existence, Lucius' upcoming trial, speculation on where Voldemort was and what he was doing, repeated theories on how or if Harry would be involved in the fight against Voldemort, and the disappearance of Rita Skeeter, one of their top reporters, they had more than enough to fill the pages for weeks.

There was an outpouring of demands for Cornelius Fudge's resignation as people blamed him for Voldemort's escape from the Ministry. There were objections to Marcus Fleetwood, too, but he managed to remain as head of the Department of Mysteries even after Fudge was replaced by Amelia Bones.

Despite a competent Minister, the Order of the Phoenix still rallied, working together with the Ministry and Aurors in their efforts to stop Voldemort gaining new followers, both among wizarding kind and the dark creatures that he sought to bring to his side. As well as the remaining former members, they were joined by a couple of Aurors, Kirith Karpel, and Marcus Fleetwood, and then Arthur Weasley and his wife and three eldest children.

Snape appeared to have deserted. After leaving Hogwarts, there was no sign of him and his house appeared empty. Sirius proclaimed he'd turned on them and was loyal to Voldemort; Dumbledore had more faith. The rest of the Order was divided, but most agreed with Sirius.

They set up in 12 Grimmauld Place, at Sirius' offer, and Sirius and Remus moved in there with James. It seemed the best compromise for the time being, and they left a large, unmissable message in Black Stag House for Harry telling him how to contact them.

After a while, once James got used to being around people a little, the Weasleys joined them, all except Charlie, who was still in Romania, and Percy, who had his own place and refused to leave it despite his mother's urging. Molly was extremely anxious about her children's safety and appreciated the extra protections Grimmauld Place afforded, and the task of trying to turn the house into something habitable gave her a distraction.

The war against Voldemort was actually minimal in terms of fighting and much of the public was lulled into a false sense of security by the lack of attacks and disappearances. Those more knowledgeable about him knew it wasn't a good thing; Voldemort was merely focused on amassing followers once more. The attacks would come when he'd re-established his power base.

* * *

Harry wasn't sure his tracking arrow would work without a real name, but he was pleasantly surprised when it did. According to it, the Assistant was somewhere in London, based on the distance it gave from Harry's location in the Lake District.

He'd been there for nearly three weeks, utterly invisible, hanging out on the trails and lakes, dodging Muggles who couldn't see him and creating a stir when the wardens found his seemingly empty boat floating in the middle of the lake. He tried not to think about Snape, Voldemort, or anything related to the wizarding world, but all too often it intruded on his thoughts.

Despite the more recent revelation of his parentage, it was still Voldemort that lingered most on this thoughts, and especially Harry's part in the fight against him. He didn't want to fight. He didn't want to be responsible for killing Voldemort, no matter what prophecies there were or what the general public might expect just because of his history. His first defeat of Voldemort had nothing to do with him—it had been his mother's sacrifice that saved him.

In fact, his other escapes from Voldemort weren't much to do with him, either, despite his power. Against Quirrell it'd again been the lingering protection of his mother; the diary had very nearly killed him but for the teachers' last minute rescue; and in February the Assistant had saved him.

If Harry was the kind of person who could kill, wouldn't he have done it then?

And what else was he supposed to do? He could probably find Voldemort and recapture him, but was there much point if Voldemort would be out again in another four months? Was he supposed to spend the rest of his life sending Voldemort back to prison?

He did feel a bit guilty about not doing anything, however, which is why he was now seeking out the Assistant. He wanted to ask him something, and depending on the answer he'd decide for sure whether he was going to bother doing anything about Voldemort, or just leave it to the rest of wizarding Britain.

He teleported to London then flew in the direction the arrow pointed him. He found the Assistant taking lunch outside a cafe, absently eating as he read _The Guardian_. For once he wasn't wearing his cloak, presumably so as not to draw attention from the Muggles around him. Harry dropped into the chair opposite him, Wishing to make himself visible to the Assistant but no one else.

"Why do you call yourself the Assistant?"

The Assistant lowered his newspaper, not looking surprised at Harry's appearance. "Why do you call yourself Evans?"

Harry briefly considered answering, 'Because I'm not a Potter,' but he could barely manage to admit that to himself; he wasn't ready to say it aloud yet.

"Because I didn't want to be Potter."

"And I don't want to be who I am."

"Who are you?"

The Assistant smiled, folding his paper and setting it aside. "I'm not ready to answer that yet. Can I get you anything?"

Not one to pass up free food, Harry nodded and made himself visible to the waitress to order. While he was waiting for his bacon bap to arrive, the Assistant asked, "So how'd you find me, anyway?"

Harry showed him the tracking arrow and explained it while the Assistant looked it over curiously.

"I admit I'm surprised it worked with this name," the Assistant said.

"Professor Dumbledore told me names have power," Harry replied, then thanked the waitress when she brought his lunch. "When the _Daily Prophet_ reported who I was, people sent letters addressed to Harry Potter but they didn't come to me because that wasn't my name anymore."

"Course," the Assistant agreed, "but that's just it—I've never exactly rejected my real name, I just use aliases. Hadn't thought I accepted them so strongly that it could work for this sort of magic. Must've been using this one for too long, I'll have to switch it up."

"I can try it with your real name if you like and see if that still works."

The Assistant passed back the arrow. "That was the worst attempt at subtlety I've ever seen. What'd you want me for anyway?"

Harry looked down at his bap, picking at a dangling bit of bacon. "Voldemort."

"What about him?"

"You said before that there was something I had to do to make him able to die properly."

"You want me to tell you it?"

Harry looked up, surprised. "You would?"

The Assistant shrugged. "Give you a few hints maybe. Reward for taking the initiative seek me out."

"Oh," Harry said. He thought about it for a bit, but then stuck with his original plan. "I was actually wondering if anyone else knows about it."

"Dumbledore," the Assistant answered immediately, then went, "I mean, probably. I haven't asked him, but there's like a ninety-five percent chance he knows."

"So he can be defeated without my help then."

The Assistant shrugged, giving no sign that he judged Harry for not wanting to get involved. "Probably, as long as Albus doesn't drag his heels. I'm curious though: you saved the Philosopher's Stone from him a few years back; why so unwilling to fight now?"

"Because other people can now," Harry said. "There was no one else to save the Stone; Dumbledore was gone and McGonagall wouldn't listen and you wouldn't do it, so I had to. But the Ministry all know about Voldemort this time and you say Dumbledore knows whatever this thing is that keeps him from dying, so it doesn't have to be me. It's not terrible of me, is it?" he asked, unable to keep all the uncertainty out of his voice. "That I don't want to get involved?"

"No. I've met a lot of terrible people in my life. Trust me, you're not one of them."

"But I could kill Voldemort without a fight," Harry pointed out.

"So could I; don't see me running out to battle him, do you?"

"Maybe you're a terrible person."

The Assistant grinned. "I am absolutely a terrible person, but not because I won't fight Voldemort. Look, you're still more than a week from turning fifteen. Anyone who expects you to deal with Voldemort is a far more terrible person than you are for not wanting to. You're a teenager. Go do teenage things. After the childhood you had, don't you think you deserve to act your age for once? To do what you like instead of what everyone else tells you to?"

 _He does have a point,_ the voice said. _Especially with your short lifespan._

"Yes," Harry said, then gave a relieved little laugh. He'd been agonising over this for weeks; it was nice to reach a firm decision. "Yes, I do."

* * *

Draco was woken by a tapping on his window. He ignored it at first, knowing any owls would go to the kitchen if ignored and Dobby would take the letters, but it persisted and he rolled out of bed, grumbling about stupid birds as he stumbled over to the window, yanked the curtains open, and then gave a startled yelp because there was no owl outside his window. It was Harry Evans.

He threw the window open. "Evans, what are you doing here? _How_ are you here?"

Harry looked down at the broomstick he was sitting on, then back up again, frowning. "I flew. Obviously."

"No, I mean, the grounds of our manor are covered with spells to keep out unexpected visitors. People can't come in unless my parents or I say they can. You shouldn't be able to be here."

Harry just shrugged. "Can I come in?"

Draco stepped back, not knowing what to say. Maybe some of the spells had been weakened or destroyed when his father was arrested. He would have to get his mother to check them in the morning.

Harry flew inside and landed. He looked around the room with his real eye while his magical one was fixed on one wall, looking towards Draco's parents' room, he realised.

"Why are you here?"

"I was lonely."

Draco's brow furrowed. "Lonely? Why?"

"I ran away from school after the end of term feast and haven't spoken to anyone since," Harry answered.

Draco gaped. Harry fidgeted. Draco snapped his mouth shut.

"You ran away and now you show up because you were _lonely_? And you come _here_?"

"You're the only person I trust not to contact my—contact Sirius or Dumbledore or anyone else."

Draco stared at him for a moment then ran a hand through his hair. "That's great, Evans, I'm touched, really, but firstly, we're not friends—something you delight in reminding me, I might point out—and secondly…"

"Secondly your dad locked James Potter in a basement for fourteen years," Harry finished quietly. "You're not your father."

"I didn't know, Evans. I had no idea, and neither did Mother."

"I know."

Draco gave him a sceptical look. Harry leant his broom against the wall.

"He was in a hidden room in the cellar. Your father's one, right?"

"Yes."

"If you'd known, you wouldn't have told me about it last summer, not like you did. You really believed there was nothing down there."

"I still don't understand why you'd come here of all places. Were you really that desperate for company?"

Harry bit his lip, then his magical eye twisted around to focus on Draco, who tried not to feel uncomfortable under that fixed dual-coloured stare.

"You've never doubted me," Harry said quietly. "You never thought I was the heir of Slytherin, you never accused me of lying about being possessed, you never told anyone who I was, you believed me when I said I didn't put my name in the Goblet of Fire. You're racist and mean, but you've always had more faith in more than even my friends. Right now, I need someone I can trust."

Draco swallowed thickly. What was he supposed to say to that?

Harry sighed softly. "I just… I need some company for a little while," he said. A look of irritation flashed across his face then and he bit his lip again, but it quickly passed. Draco didn't mention it.

"Why'd you run away?"

Harry turned away from him. "Can I sit down?"

"Yeah."

Harry sat on the edge of the bed, fiddling with the corner of his robe. He glanced at Draco, who was wearing only a pair of boxers. "Are you going to put on a dressing gown or something?"

Draco looked down at himself then back up again. "You're the one who decided to turn up at my house in the middle of the night. If you're uncomfortable, that's your problem."

"I'm not uncomfortable. I just thought you might be cold."

"I'm not."

"Okay."

An awkward silence followed. Draco pulled out his desk chair and sat down. Harry continued to fiddle with his robe and not look at him. Eventually Draco sighed.

"Evans—"

"Why did you never tell anyone who I was?"

"I had nothing to gain from it."

Harry glanced at him. "You could have used it to blackmail me."

"For what? You've got nothing I want and like I said at the start of last year, I wanted powerful friends. Blackmail wasn't the way to do it. Bribery on the other hand…"

"That's why you invited me to the Quidditch Cup."

"Didn't quite work out how I planned."

"You kept trying though. Even when I told you I'd never be your friend."

Draco met his gaze calmly, but his hands were tense. "Lyle told me you're asexual."

Harry frowned. "I never told him that."

"Is it true?"

"Yes? I don't know. Maybe. Why are we even talking about this?"

"Are you serious?" Draco said and Harry just looked at him. "Merlin, you are," he breathed and ran a hand through his hair again. He looked at Harry for a long moment, thoughtful, then got up, crossed the space between them in two steps, and grabbed Harry's face in both hands, tilting it up to his own.

"I'm going to kiss you now," he warned, and before Harry could argue with him, he pressed his lips firmly against Harry's. Harry made a soft noise of surprise and tensed up, but he didn't pull back or shove Draco away.

Draco pulled back, letting his hands slip from Harry's face but not stepping away.

"That's why we're talking about it."

"Oh," Harry said.

"Tell me you knew, Evans. Everyone in Slytherin knows. Even my mother knows. Witch-fucking-Weekly knows."

Harry flushed and averted his eyes. "I wasn't—I didn't know if—everyone said, but…"

"You're an idiot."

Harry stood, edging aside. "I should go. I'm sorry for disturbing you, I didn't—"

Draco grabbed his wrist. "You're not going anywhere. I just kissed you and all I got was an 'oh'. This is clearly something that needs discussing. Sit."

Harry squirmed, looked as if he might just jump out the window even without his broomstick, but then sighed and sat back down.

"You clearly have trouble with your sexual identity so let's keep things simple. Do you—and just to remind you that I'm not some Hufflepuff sod who'll cry and angst and start writing bad poetry if you reject me—do you fancy me?"

"No," Harry said in a small voice.

"Fine. Do you think you might fancy me one day?"

"Maybe?"

Draco sighed. "That's not helpful."

"I'm not a seer," Harry snapped. "I can't predict the future."

"Fine, just… forget about fancying. Did you like it when I kissed you?"

"It was… nice, I guess."

"You guess," Draco said dryly.

"Well it's not like I've got anything to compare it to. It wasn't horrible and… and I probably wouldn't mind doing it again, but I don't care if I never get kissed again either."

"That was seriously your first kiss?"

Harry folded his arms over his chest, defensive. "So?"

"I just assumed you'd kissed the weasel at the Yule Ball. Most people got a snog out of their dates that night."

"We only went as friends. She wasn't a _date_ date."

"And I won't even ask why you're friends with a weasel."

"Don't call her that. Her name's Ginny, and she's not as bad as her brothers."

"That's a low bar," Draco remarked. Harry didn't argue with him.

"What do you want from me, Malfoy?"

"There's a lot of things I want from you, plenty of which would make that blush in your cheeks turn red enough to put a Weasley to shame, but I'll settle for knowing why you came here tonight when you've got other people you could have gone to for company. Why don't you trust them not to tell your godfather where you are? Why don't you want him to know? Or your father, presumably."

"They'll try and make me come back, and I'm not ready yet. I just… I should go. I shouldn't have come. I'm sorry."

Draco stood as well, grabbing his wrist again. "Don't be. Don't go. It's the middle of the night, where are you even going to go?"

"I'll find somewhere," Harry muttered, pulling his hand free.

"Stay here."

Harry looked at him, half-wary, half-suspicious.

"I mean it. You can sleep here for the night. My mother never comes in without my permission so you don't have to worry about her. I'm not going to try anything," Draco added when Harry hesitated, glancing almost warily at the bed, feeling annoyed that he even had to say this. He wasn't the kind of boy that forced himself on people, and everyone who knew him knew that. Tyler Lyle even complained about the fact that Draco never did anything without telling him first. "That's a queen sized bed, Evans. There's plenty of room for us both. I'll put a shirt on if it makes you feel better."

"No, that's—you don't mind?"

"I wouldn't have offered if I minded."

Harry hesitated again, biting his lip. It was a new habit of his, one he only started this past school year. Whenever he did it, he looked like he was restraining himself from speaking and Draco always wanted to thumb his lip free and make him say what was on his mind.

Harry nodded. "Alright. I'll stay."

* * *

Harry woke with a jerk, unsure of where he was and why he was sleeping in a large, warm, extremely comfortable bed instead of the beach by the lake or a spot in the woods. He looked around, saw Draco standing in front of a full-length mirror, and stared at him for a moment until the memories of the night before came back to him.

"How's your head?" Draco asked. He was fully dressed, wearing tailored robes and a gleaming pair of leather shoes, and didn't pause in combing his hair as he spoke.

"My head?" Harry repeated, sitting up and rubbing sleep from his eyes. "It's fine. Why?"

"You had a seizure in your sleep, headbutted me hard enough to make my nose bleed."

"Sorry."

"I'll live. Breakfast for you," Draco added, gesturing to his desk where there was a tray with some toast and a glass of juice. "That's what you normally have, isn't it?"

Harry nodded, climbing out the bed and picking up his jeans from the floor. He'd slept in his boxers and t-shirt. "Thanks. Are you going somewhere?"

Draco turned before the mirror, inspecting himself and not looking at Harry's reflection as he answered. "My father's trial is this morning."

Harry looked away. "I should go," he muttered, grabbing his Nimbus. "Thanks for—"

"You can stay," Draco interrupted, finally turning away from the mirror. "Mother and I will be out most of the morning and I've ordered Dobby—our house-elf—not to come in here. I've got my own bathroom, so you can shower," he said, waving a hand at the door, "and you're welcome to borrow a clean robe, though it might be a little too big, but it's better than putting on dirty clothes."

 _Oh, go on. A shower's even better than having a bed to sleep in. Magical cleaning just doesn't do the job properly and you know it. I think we should really make the most of this. He's utterly smitten with you; we can use that to our advantage. Might have to—_

Harry shook his head, ignoring the voice and pushing open the window. "Really, I should—thanks for letting me stay and everything, but…"

He trailed off, not sure what he wanted to say, and mounted the broom, flying out without looking at him. He waited until he was out of sight of the window, then Wished his invisibility to be complete. He'd only been visible to Draco last night, to ensure Snape couldn't track him with that pendant of his, but Harry planned to infiltrate the Ministry that morning and he didn't need Draco seeing him among the crowd.

Once he was past the boundaries of the Malfoy Manor grounds, he teleported to London. He stole a sandwich and bottle of coke for his breakfast, found a quiet corner to eat in, and then headed to the Ministry of Magic. He didn't know what time Lucius' trial was at, but he would need time to get around the Ministry anyway, and it was probably enclosed enough that he would have to be careful about not getting touched.

He could teleport in, arriving in a pre-determined Apparition room with a number of other witches and wizards arriving for the day's work. It took him out into the atrium, where he immediately flew up to avoid the mess of people swarming the place. Here, at least, it was roomy enough, the ceiling high above, but when he passed through the golden gates to the lifts, the ceiling was much lower and he had to levitate himself flatly. The lifts themselves were even worse, people crowding inside them to maximum capacity. He hovered about for a while, listening to the chatter to find out where the trial was while he worked out how he'd get in a lift.

Eventually he had the location—courtroom ten, on the ninth floor—and he managed to nip into a lift in the brief moment before the doors shut, pressing himself flat against the top of it and watching little paper aeroplanes flutter about between him and the heads of the people below him.

 _I've been telling you to sneak in here for ages. This is a great opportunity, you realise. We could get into the Minister's office. In fact if we go now, it'll be empty. He's bound to be at Lucius' trial. We could find out all sorts of things._

He ignored it. He wasn't interested in spying on the Ministry.

He was last out when the lift reached the ninth floor, announcing the Department of Mysteries and letting out the three people remaining in the lift. In the corridor beyond, one of the people turned down a separate corridor and disappeared through a dark door. Harry followed the other two further down and eventually came to the courtroom.

It was a large, cold room, windowless and unwelcoming. Harry hovered over the spectator seats, watching them fill up with unfamiliar curious onlookers and people he knew—Sirius and Remus, but not James; Draco and Narcissa; and Dumbledore was among the Wizengamot, dressed unusually solemnly in plum-coloured robes. There was a gaggle of reports sat in one section; Harry was surprised not to see Rita Skeeter among them.

There were murmurs when Lucius was brought in. Although dressed in good robes with his hair tied into a neat ponytail at the base of his neck, he wasn't as well-presented as the Lucius Malfoy Harry remembered from the Quidditch World Cup. There were shadows under his eyes, his face looked paler, and he didn't have the air of untouchable grace, dignity, and power.

He was accompanied by a single Dementor and Harry shuddered, hovering up further as the horribly familiar coldness washed over him, suddenly second guessing his decision to come. The last thing he needed was to have a seizure and his magic to fail him right in the middle of the courtroom.

The Dementor fortunately didn't stay after Lucius was chained to the chair in the middle of the room. Amelia Bones called for quiet and announced the purpose of the trial and named the involved parties to the court scribe, Percy Weasley. They went through the initial details, and then Lucius was called upon to give his testimony.

* * *

Godric's Hollow was dark and quiet. Only the very centre of the village had those ugly Muggle street lights and their orange glow didn't reach Lucius, standing just beyond the treeline of a small woodland area by the side of the road leading out of the village. He was not happy to be there, acting as a watchdog to keep an eye out for members of the Order who might be coming to visit or got word of an attack. The Dark Lord had Sirius Black secretly working for him (not that Lucius had found anyone who actually met with him, but they all knew it now that the Dark Lord could reach the Potters), but they were certain the Order had a spy within their ranks, too.

Still, at least he was here. Only two others had the privilege of accompanying their master to Godric's Hollow this night; Bellatrix and Antonin, both stationed at other points around the village.

"—believe that _bitch_ ," a male voice suddenly came from the road. Lucius straightened up from the tree he was leaning against, drawing his wand and creeping forwards. His feet were charmed so he made no noise when he walked, allowing him to hear the scuff of the speaker's footsteps on the road. They were unhurried but heavy, the man expelling his anger through his feet as well his voice. "Two years—two _years_ —she's fucking lying to me—lying about my _son_ —"

He broke off with a bark of humourless laughter just as he came into sight. It was James Potter, which made his words suddenly curious. What was this lie about the baby that his young Mudblood wife had been telling? Was it pertinent at all to the prophecy and the Dark Lord's plan to kill the child? If it was and Lucius found out, he'd be well praised.

Overwhelming Potter was easy. The idiot man didn't even have his wand out, despite knowing he was a target in the middle of a war. Lucius was easily able to stalk up behind him, hex him, and drag him into the woods. He bound Potter to a tree, took his wand, and stood before him as Potter struggled and swore.

"What the fuck is this? You afraid of a fair fight, you piece of shit? You Death Eaters are all the same cowardly fucks."

Lucius flicked his wand. Potter twisted and groaned.

"It funny how all you self-righteous types seem to think that ensuring one's advantage is the same as cowardice. That's why you'll lose this war."

Potter didn't seem to be listening, still squirming within the ropes binding him. "Fuck, what did you do to my back?"

"Tell me what your wife's been lying about and your back will be fine."

Potter stopped squirming, only a slight unavoidable twitch keeping him from complete stillness. "You stay away from my wife," he snarled.

"The lying bitch?"

"You shut up about her, you don't know anything."

"I know she was lying about your son. What is it? Did she step out on you? Is the child not really yours?"

"My marriage is none of your business!" Potter snapped, face twisting furiously.

Lucius smiled. "I'm right, aren't I? Your Mudblood slut couldn't keep her legs shut. So who's the real father of the little brat?" Lucius asked. He was only mocking Potter, but as soon as he said it Lucius realised there was more to it than that.

If Harry Potter wasn't James Potter's real son, what did it mean for the prophecy?

Lucius didn't get time to ponder it. A distant explosion from the village drew his attention.

"Lily," Potter breathed, and resumed his furious struggling. "Lily!"

Lucius stared in the direction of the village, but he couldn't see much from his location. But that explosion… the Dark Lord almost always killed with the Killing Curse. When he didn't, it was only on traitors he wanted to make an example of, but even those he never killed in any way that would cause an explosion.

Lucius hexed Potter to shut him up, only Stunning him for now. This new information on Potter's son was too vital for Lucius to get rid of him right now, and the Dark Lord had been so adamant on killing the Potters himself. He might not look kindly on Lucius for doing it.

Then he Apparated to the village. He might irritate the Dark Lord for leaving his post, but he had to find out what was happening. Something had gone wrong tonight. Lucius could feel it.

He reappeared in the village centre, turned, saw smoke curling up from one of the cottages further down the street, and ran for it. When he reached the cottage he knew it had to be the Potters'. It was a little known fact that sufficient damage to a property, especially by dark magic, could invalidate the Fidelius Charm. This cottage was half destroyed, the lower half blown clear away, scattering debris across the front garden and the road.

A baby cried. Carefully, wary of the upper floor collapsing on him, Lucius picked his way through the debris and into what seemed to be the remains of a living room. He found Lily Potter's body half sprawled over a couch, eyes wide and empty as they stared dully at the ceiling. Moving around it, he finally found the source of the crying.

Little Harry Potter sat in a clear patch on the floor, surrounded by the debris but apparently untouched except for a single bright wound on his forehead. It wasn't actively bleeding, but it was inflamed and obviously fresh, shaped like a lightning bolt. Lucius was no expert, but even he could recognise the injury as a curse wound.

But there was no sign of the Dark Lord. If Lucius didn't know better, he'd have thought the Dark Lord attacked the child and then fled, but he would never do that. The Dark Lord didn't flee from anyone, let alone defenceless children. Had he found out the child wasn't Potter's son, decided it meant he wasn't the one the prophecy referred to, and left the child alive? It was odd—it wasn't like the Dark Lord hadn't killed babes before—but Lucius couldn't think what else could explain the circumstances.

A noise from the direction of the kitchen made him jump and he whirled, wand out and a Killing Curse already falling from his lips. The spell was halfway across the room before he realised the noise was just a cat, then the spell struck, leaving the animal dead.

Noises came from outside, this time definitely a booming voice. "James! Lily!"

Rubeus Hagrid. That giant of a buffoon that worked for Dumbledore. If he was here, then others would be close behind.

Lucius looked down at Harry, who'd cried himself into hiccups, and his fingers twitched on his wand, but he didn't do anything. He'd killed a few children in his time, but not since Draco was born. He couldn't bring himself to do it, unable to get rid of the image of his own son when he was faced with a babe.

"James!"

He had to go. He would find out what happened here later.

But as he turned to leave, an idea came to him. It was wild. Insane. And yet…

"Lily! James!"

He didn't have time to debate it. He pointed his wand at the dead cat and transfigured it. He'd always excelled at transfiguration and using a dead animal only helped in this case. He made the animal look like James and left it there. Only someone examining it closely would realise that the body wasn't human, and with any luck no one would bother. Why would they have reason to suspect that the body of James Potter in his own home was anything except that?

He could hear the thumping footsteps of Hagrid outside now and he couldn't linger any longer. He Disapparated from the house, reappearing back in the woods where he'd left Potter. The young man was still tied to the tree and unconscious. Lucius untied him, cast a Weightlessness Charm, and grabbed a hold of him. He would take him to the Dark Lord and let him decide what was to be done with him. Lucius wasn't sure what happened in the village tonight, but whatever it was, he was sure he'd be reward for bringing the Dark Lord someone he'd wanted to kill for a long time.

* * *

A long silence followed as the people in the court absorbed it. Lucius sat with his expression calm, almost bored, as though he just described nothing more than his morning routine. The expressions of everyone else in the courtroom ranged from shock, to hatred, to disbelief. Sirius' was one of pure loathing and Remus stared at Lucius with hatred burning in his normally friendly eyes. Narcissa's face was carefully blank and Draco's was mixed shock, anger, and distress. Harry felt a mess of emotions, none of which he could quite put a name too.

Dumbledore was the first person to speak. "Do you readily admit to being a Death Eater, a willing servant of Lord Voldemort?"

Lucius lifted his chin. "I do."

"Fourteen years ago, you claimed you were forced to do his bidding."

"Circumstances change."

The trial went on, but not for much longer. Kirith and a psychologist from Saint Mungo's testified that James had been subject to the Cruciatus Curse and other dark magic, and wasn't mentally fit enough to give testimony as to what happened, though they didn't explain exactly what that meant.

It seemed a bit pointless after Lucius already confessed his guilt, and it was no surprise when he was pronounced guilty and sentenced to life in Azkaban. Lucius' face was utterly blank of any emotion, but when the Dementor walked him out again and his back was turned to everyone in the room, fear flickered in his eyes.

Harry wanted to leave quickly afterwards, but he reluctantly hung back to let the crowds thin. He watched the reporters converge on Draco and Narcissa, harassing them for a statement and getting in their way until Narcissa hexed one of them, then they quickly moved aside.

Sirius and Remus, to Harry's upset, hung back to speak with Dumbledore and by the time Harry felt it safe enough to leave, they were going too. They ended up at the lifts together and Harry almost decided to wait for the next one, but they were the only ones in it and it wasn't like they could see him. When the doors closed on them, Sirius sighed heavily, leaning against Remus.

"I wish he'd got the Kiss," he said spitefully. "I really do, Moony."

"He'll be in Azkaban the rest of his life, Sirius. It's enough."

"It's not."

Remus said nothing, just kissed his cheek.

"Do you think Harry was there?" Sirius asked quietly.

"I don't know. If he isn't following the news, he might not know the trial was today."

"God, I wish we knew where he was. Anything could have happened to him."

"Albus said he can look after himself and hide better than anyone. I'm sure he's fine."

"I hope so. I just want to know he's safe."

They reached the atrium and the doors opened. Harry followed them out and towards the fireplaces, debating following them home or revealing himself to them, but in the end he wasn't brave enough.

He made his way back to the Apparition room, and teleported away.

The Assistant knew the Mark would catch him out eventually, but there was little he could do about it. He had irrefutable orders to answer the summons whenever it came, so when it burned in mid-July just when he'd sweet-talked a beautiful Muggle woman into taking him home with her, he had no choice but to kiss her quick, promise he'd been back in a moment, and nip off somewhere quiet to Disapparate.

Unfortunately, he wasn't able to keep his promise. Being out with Muggles, he wasn't wearing his cloak, and as he intended to merely Apparate to Voldemort's location and immediately leave again without being seen—his orders were to _answer_ the summons, not to stay—he didn't bother retrieving it. He just rendered himself invisible and Disapparated, reappearing in an empty room. The concrete walls were white-washed, their lower half covered by tiles, the floor was mouldy linoleum that was peeling at the edges, and the empty windows were half-boarded up with planks. One wall was sectioned into showers, no curtains on them and half the showerheads missing.

On every wall, on the ceiling, on the floor, magic suppression runes were painted in deep red.

It was an unpleasant issue with those runes that, done right, they did not affect magic entering them, merely leaving. As such, the moment he appeared, he couldn't Apparate out again and it stripped away both his invisibility and the glamour he wore—a glamour that kept his hair blonde, his eyes blue, and his face looking different.

Two brutish men were inside the room and they both leapt at him as soon as he appeared. He ducked and sidestepped, avoiding being knocked to the floor.

"Missed me," he mocked, then ropes appeared from thin air and twisted around him so tightly he fought to breathe, and then a bang, a flash of red, and a Stunning Spell hit him.

When he woke up, he was stripped naked and laid out on a rack. The runes on the walls were gone, but there were more etched into the leather binding his wrists. Voldemort stood over him, wand out.

"Kinky," the Assistant said in a carefree tone. "But really, Muggle torture devices? Where the fuck did you even get this?"

In response, Voldemort tapped his wand to the crank, the gears clunked, and the Assistant grimaced as he was pulled taut.

"You surprise me, Assistant," Voldemort said. "I admit that I nearly didn't attempt this. I did not think you were really so foolish as to come when I called."

"So little faith in your marked followers," the Assistant mocked, then snapped his fingers. "Oh, wait, I guess you can't be blamed when they did abandon you for thirteen years. What excuses did they give for not coming to their master's aid?"

"What excuse do you give?" Voldemort asked and trailed his wand over the Assistant's left forearm. "You bear my mark, though I didn't give it to you, and you have power that would have restored me. Why did you not come to my aid, to my _assistance_?"

The Assistant chuckled. "That's funny. Very clever. Don't quit your day job, though."

"Why did you not come to my aid?"

The Assistant sighed. "Fine, fine. Pretty simple really: I couldn't. I was stuck in Hogsmeade and its surrounding environs for about sixteen years. Couldn't leave at all. Didn't Lucius tell you that?"

"What Master ordered you not to leave?"

"Ask me another one."

Voldemort narrowed his gaze and lifted his wand. " _Crucio!_ "

Ten seconds was like an eternity when it was filled with absolute agony, but the Assistant had endured worse.

"Come _on_ ," he panted when it stopped. "You can do better than that."

Another tap, _clunk_ , and the Assistant winced.

"Who ordered you not to leave?"

"Ask me another one."

" _Crucio!_ "

Twenty seconds this time.

"You can torture me all you want; I'm not answering the question. Ask me something else."

"You will tell me."

"Maybe, but not right now." He adopted an overly-dramatic seductive expression. "Our relationship just isn't ready for it yet."

Voldemort looked furious. " _Crucio!_ "

Thirty seconds, followed by tap, _clunk_ , and the Assistant groaned and swore.

"I will make you talk."

"Never said I wouldn't talk," the Assistant gasped. "Just waiting for the right questions."

"Then answer this one: sixteen years—is that the point to which you travelled back in time?"

The Assistant gave Voldemort an approving look. "Figured that out did you?"

Voldemort tapped his wand to the Assistant's forehead. "It's the logical explanation."

"Yes, but you're not always logical. You do like to let your emotions get the better of you sometimes. A lot of the time, actually."

Voldemort looked at him angrily. The Assistant stared back, silently daring Voldemort to torture him again and prove him right. Voldemort didn't.

"Why did you come back? What are you trying to change?

"Everything. And I succeeded."

"Is that so."

The Assistant shifted in a motion that, were he not stretched out so cruelly, might have been a shrug. "For a while, at least. Three more years and it'll reset. I'll have to do it all over again. Can I just say, I've always found it impressive how you can show so many expressions with no eyebrows. Especially confusion, like right now. Really quite remarkable how you manage to express that with a face like yours."

"Explain yourself, Assistant, before I force you to."

The Assistant raised his own eyebrows, a mocking smile playing about his lips. "Time loop, m'lordship, sir. Y'see, the spell I used to go back in time didn't quite work out properly. So now I get to play the same nineteen years over and over again until I figure out how to break it."

"Tell me your name."

"You already know it. You knew it the moment you saw my true face."

"Tell me your name," Voldemort ordered again. "The one your parents gave you at birth."

There was no smile on the Assistant's face now, no mocking glint in his eyes, just a carefully blank expression as he said quietly, "The name my parents gave me at birth was Harry Potter."


	22. Chapter 22

**Chapter 22**

"Why did I allow you into my ranks?" Voldemort asked the Assistant. "Why did I not kill you?"

"My life was a whole lot different to Harry Evans'," the Assistant replied. "We're different people, and the people from my timeline are all different to the ones in this timeline."

"That's not the answer to my question."

"Yes, it is. I grew up with my dad—with Severus Snape—after your counterpart attempted to kill me as a baby, but he died when I was six and Lucius Malfoy adopted me a couple of years later. By the time your counterpart returned to power, I wasn't some sick, distrustful kid with more power than I knew how to handle, I was a Death Eater's child. I believed everything Lucius Malfoy stood for—everything _you_ stood for. Why on earth would you kill someone with my amount of power when you could have me kneeling at your feet instead, willing to obey your every order?"

"Are you still willing to obey my every order?"

"Can we have this discussion when I'm not stretched across the chopping board?"

Voldemort tapped the crank, the gears clunked, and the Assistant whined painfully.

"Answer me. Are you still willing to obey my every order?"

"Most of them."

"Not good enough, Harry."

The Assistant's gaze narrowed. "For a man who despises his own birth name, you certainly lack the respect of calling others by their chosen names, _Tom_."

Tap, _clunk_.

"The Assistant is nothing more than a cover to hide behind. Your secret is out now, Harry Potter. You can use your true name."

"The Assistant is the name I chose in this timeline," he replied weakly. "My identity is irrelevant. And as a side note, it's not Potter, it's Snape. Dad raised me; it's his name I used, not James'."

"Curious that you were raised by him, when the Harry Potter of this… timeline… was not."

The Assistant closed his eyes and would have looked like a man relaxing if not for the sweat slicking his body, the pallor in his skin, and the tense lines in his face betraying the pain he felt. "It seems my very existence causes alterations even if I don't interfere. In my timeline, your counterpart killed James Potter the same night he killed my mother. In others, your counterpart has succeeded in killing my counterpart that night, too."

"How many of these timelines have you lived?"

"God knows. I lost count the first time I spent an entire timeline drugged up to my eyeballs, but I don't always survive the full nineteen years, and once I do—zap! Back to nineteen seventy-nine, physically reset to exactly how I was at seventeen years old, nothing but the clothes on my back and the memories of another timeline in which I failed to break the loop."

"Tell me what happened that made you attempt to go back in time, Assistant. You said you wanted to change everything. Why?"

The Assistant opened his eyes to consider him for a moment, then squirmed the little that he could, winced, and sighed before answering.

"In my timeline, your counterpart retrieved the Philosopher's Stone from Hogwarts at the end of my first year. By the time I turned fifteen, he was in full power. I was utterly loyal to him, Dumbledore was dead, the Ministry was, as always, a pushover… the world was his playground. The Muggleborns were segregated, refused education, tortured and killed for pleasure. But he got cocky. Him and his Death Eaters were too drunk on power and things got out of hand. The Muggles found out about magic and he underestimated them. He thought his power and mine was enough to stop them, but even I've got my limits and their numbers were too huge and they've got some pretty impressive weapons of mass destruction."

"Mere Muggles cannot defeat Lord Voldemort."

The Assistant shook his head. "That's what your counterpart thought. The Muggles aren't a threat to us only as long as they don't know we exist. Do you know what the current wizarding population of Britain is? About fifty thousand. The current Muggle population? Fifty _million_. They outnumber us a thousand to one. Their government is a lot more willing to play nice with foreign governments than our Ministry is. When they turn on us, it's _bad_. By the time I decided to hop back in time, there was talk of nuclear weapons. We were barely holding off air raids and we were already falling to battalions of armed soldier. We couldn't have survived nuclear war. That's how determined the Muggles were to destroy us."

Voldemort said nothing for a while. The Assistant wondered if he was thinking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at the time of which he was alive. Even the purest wizards with the most anti-Muggle ideals who were alive in 1945 heard about the destruction inflicted upon those cities.

"You tell a good story, Assistant."

"You don't believe me."

"Why should I? I have you tied and powerless, I killed your mother, I have attempted to kill you. Your thrilling tale is likely nothing more than an attempt to gain your freedom so that you can take your revenge."

The Assistant smiled, though it was strained. "There are two very important things you need to know, _my lord_. First: you are not the Voldemort who killed my mother any more than I am Harry Evans. My timeline, and everyone in it, is gone. To the best of my knowledge, it's never been recreated and all my attempts to do so have failed. I can only assume Lady Fate herself does not permit two identical timelines to exist."

His smile faded then and his green eyes seemed to glow with power as he stared at Voldemort, his expression one that, even bound as he was, would make a lesser man run for the hills. Voldemort tightened his grip on his wand.

"The second thing is that if I wanted you dead, you would have died in February without even knowing I was there."

Voldemort's eyes were full of fury, but his voice was soft. "Would I?"

"Do not underestimate me."

Voldemort's mouth curled into something approximating a smile. He put the tip of his wand to the edge of the Assistant's wrist, just below the leather holding him, and slowly trailed it along the man's arm. There was a sizzling noise and the stink of burnt flesh and the Assistant arched off the rack, choking back a scream at first only to let it out as the wand passed over his armpit and carried on down his side, passing over his hip and all the way down his leg to his bound ankle. Only then did Voldemort lift his wand, raking satisfied eyes up the line of burnt flesh before he moved to lean over the Assistant, red eyes staring into green.

"I have you at my mercy, Harry," he said softly. "I have you bound and powerless, and we both know I do not need a wand to hurt you. You would torture yourself for me."

The Assistant let out a weak chuckle, but it wasn't as careless as his earlier mocking laughs. "I'm not that much of a masochist."

"Even if I told you to kill Harry Evans?"

The Assistant said nothing.

"Lucius told me about the Animancupium. He believes you to be Bound by that old magic and it is the reason for your pitiful moaning in my father's house."

"Bully for Lucius."

Voldemort moved around and put his wand to the Assistant's other wrist, once again slowly dragging his wand down the Assistant's skin and speaking as the flesh burned.

"I told you not to help young Harry and yet you did, suffering obvious agony for your disobedience. If I told you to kill him, how long would you endure the pain before the Animancupium overwhelmed you and forced you to obey me?"

The Assistant didn't answer, even when the wand left his skin and his screams gave way to whimpers.

"Tell me who you are Bound to. It's certainly not to me, and yet it's my orders you must obey or suffer for it."

"No one in this timeline," the Assistant answered weakly. His eyes were lidded and his pulse beat rapidly in his throat. "Can't tell you how pissed off I was about that. Travel back in time and I'm still Bound by his fucking orders."

"Whose?"

"Like I said, no one in this timeline."

Tap, _clunk_ , and the Assistant cried out.

"Tell me who your Master is."

The Assistant clenched his jaw and his body twitched, then he spat out, "Lucius Malfoy."

"Lucius is already Bound. The Animancupium does not permit two Bindings."

The Assistant grunted. "I thought he might have Bound James. But you're not paying attention—I told you, I'm Bound to the Lucius Malfoy of _my_ timeline, not yours. He might not be able to give me orders anymore, but I'm still tied to the bastard."

It was an outright lie, but he wasn't about to admit that the magic wrapped around his soul could be transferred. He didn't need someone of this timeline controlling him and giving him fresh orders.

"The same Lucius who adopted you after your father's death."

"Yes."

"Why did my counterpart not Bind you himself?"

"Damned if I know. Consequently, my Binding to Lucius was also the reason I was stuck in Hogsmeade."

"Oh?"

"Tell you if you ease the stretching," the Assistant offered. "Otherwise I'm gonna pass out soon. Can't tell you nothing then."

"Talk until you do. Then I will wake you and you can talk again."

The Assistant closed his eyes and let out a faint whimper, but opened his mouth and talked.

"After Lucius adopted me, Draco got shoved aside a bit. You know, he was a slightly above average wizard with attitude problems, but I was a super-powered whiz-kid eager to please… Draco became second best in everything but Quidditch the day I moved in, and Quidditch wasn't that high on Lucius' list of priorities. Didn't help that Narcissa was in prison before his tenth birthday. By the time we started at Hogwarts, Draco was desperate for someone to praise him, to give him a bit of the attention he deserved, and Dumbledore picked up on it immediately. He saw an opportunity to turn one of the Dark Lord's most loyal against his own family, bring him over to the light side, and he took it. By the time your counterpart returned, Draco was so taken with Dumbledore, that he denounced you. He stood by Dumbledore right up to his death and even then he refused to join us."

He paused. His eyes were still shut, but his expression was bitter, mouth tight not only with pain but also hate and loss. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet.

"The Dark Lord ordered me to kill him. I can resist your orders because you're only his counterpart so the compulsion isn't completely there, but him I had to obey. We weren't even fifteen. Lucius would have stopped me if he'd been there, but the Dark Lord correctly guessed as much and purposely kept him away. Lucius realised too late that he'd done wrong by Draco, and when it was over he hated me for it. The Dark Lord forbade him to kill me, so Lucius ordered that I was to remain at Hogwarts and Hogsmeade, unless called by the Dark Lord. Lucius never wanted to see me again."

He opened his eyes then, lifting them to meet Voldemort's. "But like I said, time travel didn't break the connection so I was still bound to obey him. I couldn't leave Hogsmeade until you called, but you didn't know I existed so my Mark only burned when you called for everyone, which this time around didn't happen until after you returned this summer."

It was completely true, except that it was hundreds of years—maybe even a thousand or more—since he'd been Bound to that Lucius. He just had a unfortunate tendency to piss off his Masters, and the Bellatrix Lestrange of his previous timeline had, just before the loop reset, given him the same orders. His only luck was that she hadn't been specific enough to order him to return to the village after each summoning, so after Voldemort called for him that first time in February he was free to go where he pleased.

"So," Voldemort said, fingering his wand, "you aided me by allowing Peter Pettigrew to escape Auror custody because you knew he would seek me out and assist with my resurrection ritual, and then you put Lucius and Peter in contact."

"Yup. Aren't I nice? More than anyone else did."

"Yet less than what you could do."

The Assistant said nothing.

"You could have aided me sooner, Harry. You could have helped me retrieve the Philosopher's Stone. Why didn't you?"

"I was busy. Fell in love," he explained when Voldemort merely looked at him. "With a woman. Forgot all about you to be honest, until she left to go back to her husband."

"And what's your excuse for saving the young Harry from me?"

The Assistant gave him a baleful look. "Come on, the kid's pathetic. You said it yourself. Are you really going to waste your efforts trying to kill him? Especially now your forces are so depleted?"

"That is your fault. Had you not interfered in February, Harry would be dead, my followers would be free, and no one would be any the wiser as to my return."

"You can recover, especially with my help."

"Your help?" Voldemort tapped his wand repeatedly against the Assistant's chest, generating little sparks and making him twitch and gasp. "I'm expected to trust in _your_ help?"

The Assistant's expression was pained but his gaze was firm as it met Voldemort's. "Leave Harry alone, and yes, I'll be more help than you could ever ask for. I'll even prove it—I'll tell you where to find your snake."

* * *

Just days after the trial of Lucius Malfoy, Narcissa Malfoy made a public statement denouncing her husband's actions, reiterated his claim that she was ignorant of it, and announced her impending divorce and that she would subsequently retake her maiden name of Black.

* * *

Harry waited a couple of days, and then wrote a message to Sirius and Wished it to him. He wasn't brave enough to turn up unannounced, so he waited a day and Wished the letter back to see what—if anything—Sirius wrote on the back, as Harry had asked him to do. His own message had been fairly brief, but Sirius' filled up the entire page with promises that he didn't hate Harry, that he wanted him to come home, and that they wouldn't make any decisions on living arrangements with James without discussing it.

Harry read it, swallowed thickly, picked up his bag and teleported. When he arrived at home, he was still invisible. Sirius was pacing the living room, stopping at the window on every turn to peer out. Harry watched him for a minute, but when Sirius made for the door to the front hall, Harry dropped his invisibility.

"Sirius?"

Sirius spun, inhaled sharply, and stalked across the room only to stop short when Harry tensed. "Harry. Are you alright?"

"Did you really mean it? What you wrote?"

"Of course I did. Harry, I would never abandon you. Not ever."

"Even though James isn't my dad?"

" _Yes._ You're my godson, Harry. I love you."

Harry's eyes widened. "You… do?"

Sirius looked baffled. "Course I do. You think I wouldn't?"

Given that they'd only known each other a year, and spent only two months of that living together, Harry couldn't figure how Sirius decided to love him already, especially as they hadn't always got along last summer.

But all he said was, "You hate Snape."

"You're not Snape."

Harry's breath hitched. He didn't realise how much he needed to hear that until Sirius said it.

He took a step forwards and then Sirius was on him, pulling him into a tight hug, Harry's face pressed to his shoulder. He squeezed his eyes shut, swallowing thickly around the sudden lump in his throat.

"Is that why you ran away?" Sirius asked, not letting him go. "You thought we'd hate you for not being James' son?"

Harry nodded. Sirius sighed, squeezing him tightly. "Whatever I think of Snape, it's nothing to do with you. It doesn't matter that he's… your father," he said it as though the words left a horrible taste in his mouth, "you're still my godson and I still care about you. So does Remus."

Harry pulled back. "What about James? What's happening with him? You said you were living somewhere else right now?"

"Yeah. Sit down, let's talk, and we'll figure it all out."

* * *

Voldemort was based out of an abandoned hospital he and the few remaining Death Eaters appropriated for their use. Numerous spells kept out undesirables and much of it was in disrepair; it had three storeys and they only fixed up the rooms they needed. The chapel on the ground floor had been striped of its remaining pews and artifacts to be used as the group meeting room, for when he eventually released his followers from Azkaban.

For more informal meetings, a former conference room on the middle floor had been converted—that is, it had a throne-like chair for Voldemort and a couple of other seats that Death Eaters rarely got to use—with its walls darkened and wood floor restored. An attached office had been made in a bedroom for Voldemort himself, a room that absolutely no other person ever entered.

The Assistant had been moved to a patient room. There was no hospital bed, but a simple metal framed one with a thin mattress on it. He'd been given a basic robe to wear, but his wrists were shackled and the metal etched with magic restraints and his ankle was chained to the footpost of the bed, stretching just far enough for him to use the tiny en suite bathroom.

For the few days following his capture, Voldemort and the two brutes who'd tried to attack him before—Calvin Crabbe and Andrew Goyle—were the only people he saw. Crabbe and Goyle alternated bringing him food and Voldemort tortured him for information or as punishment for keeping thing from him—like he was now.

"Why did you not mention that your Animancupium Bond can be transferred?" Voldemort asked when he stopped the Cruciatus.

"Why would I?" the Assistant rasped, curling up into a foetal position on the cold floor. "Why would I want to give power over me to someone else? More importantly, I don't want to be ripped away from my current Master."

"You current Master cannot even interact with you."

"Still my Master." He groaned and forced himself to get up to his knees, tilting his head back to look at Voldemort. "What does it matter to you anyway? You can still order me to obey you and I have to."

"You can fight. You told me yourself and I have seen you do it."

"I told you: leave the kid alone, and I'll be as loyal to you as I was to your counterpart."

Voldemort put his wand under the Assistant's chin, pushing his head back further. "Is that so?"

"I swear it."

"Your word is not enough to me, Assistant."

He chuckled. "Alright, fair enough. Here's a deal: leave me alone for… what time is it? Like mid-afternoon? Give me until midnight and I'll prove myself loyal. I do that, you let me join the ranks without transferring my Bond. I don't, you can do the ritual and take it away. Deal?"

"I hope you are prepared to give yourself to a new Master, Assistant," Voldemort replied, turning and walking out, shutting and locking the door behind him.

For several hours, the Assistant did nothing but lie on the bed and try to ignore the lingering aches from several days of intermittent torture. It would have been easier with something to distract him, but he'd been in worse pain with nothing to do. People really liked to torture him.

After a few hours, his door opened and Andrew Goyle came in, carrying a tray with a bowl of soup complete with garnish, a thick slice of bread, and a stick of butter.

"Andy," the Assistant said, sitting up and taking the tray, "You're a darling, has anyone ever told you that? Your wife must adore you."

Goyle had turned to leave, but at that he turned back, took the bowl of soup, and dumped it over the Assistant's head.

"Don't ever call me pussy names."

He walked off while soup was still dripping down the Assistant's face. Chuckling, he wiped away the worst of it and cleared his hands. His stick of butter was untouched and he picked it up and smeared it over the thumb joint of both hands. He took a deep breathe and, one after the other, dislocated his thumbs and wriggled his hands out of the shackles.

Once free, his blond haired glamour fell immediately into place. He fixed his thumbs, removed the shackle around his ankle, cleaned himself up completely, transfigured his robes into something nice, and conjured his rune-embroidered cloak. Settling it in place, he conjured a mirror to check his appearance, and then left.

The first thing he did was find Goyle and erase his memories of the Assistant's true identity. Crabbe wasn't around the hospital right then, but he'd be the Assistant's next stop after finding Voldemort.

He was in the conference room-turned-meeting room, pacing slowly in the darkness, Nagini curled in the corner asleep. It was one of the few rooms in the hospital whose windows had been fully repaired, thick curtains hung over them to keep out all but a sliver of sunlight.

Voldemort turned with a vicious look when the door opened, raising his wand only to pause when he saw who it was.

The Assistant smiled. "I told you not to underestimate me."

"Crabbe or Goyle—which one released you?"

"Neither. They might not be the brightest pair, but they're loyal to you, my lord. As am I," he said, dropping down on one knee before Voldemort. "I could have escaped anytime in the last few days. I could have just walked off and left, or even taken some revenge and tortured you, but instead here I am on my knees to profess my loyalty. So you're not going to transfer my Bond."

"Do you despise being Bound so much?"

"Only a man whose soul is his own would ask that. And the kid?"

Voldemort considered him for several long moments. The Assistant closed his eyes, waiting for his decision and hoping it didn't involve more torture.

"Harry Evans is safe from me," he finally said. "The prophecy says he has the power to defeat me, but it does not state that he _will_ kill me. He had his chance in February and he never took it, so I will leave him be as long as he leaves me. As for you—you will remain in the hospital unless I send you to do my bidding, in which case you will go only where I command and return as soon as your task is complete. You will obey my every command _to the letter_ or suffer the consequences. Prove yourself loyal to me, Assistant, and you shall retain your minor freedom."

The Assistant opened his eyes, lifting his head to meet Voldemort's gaze, holding it briefly before lowering his eyes and bowing his head.

"I am yours to command, my lord," he murmured with complete sincerity.

* * *

When the Assistant was captured, Severus was getting terrorised by werewolves.

'Negotiating' was the official term, but any interaction with Fenrir Greyback qualified as being terrorised.

That said, in Severus' opinion, interaction with any werewolf counted as being terrorised.

"How can the Dark Lord promise us anything when he can't even keep his own people out of prison?" Greyback asked.

"It was a setback," Severus admitted, "but the Dark Lord will soon free them, and bring the Dementors to his side as well."

They sat in a dingy pub in Knockturn Alley, Severus clenching his wand below the table, tip aimed towards Greyback's crotch. The werewolf had to know, but appeared completely at ease, which only made Severus more tense.

"It's just not very encouraging is what I'm saying," Greyback said, using one filthy, taloned nail to scrape a gouge in the table. "The Ministry goes after our lot enough already, without your Dark Lord getting us all rounded up."

"The Dark Lord has no intention of rounding you up," Severus said, carefully keeping the regret from his voice. It was perfectly true, much to his disappointment. "He's offering you freedom. A lot more than the Ministry would give you, or Dumbledore and his cronies. All they want to do is preserve the status quo."

"And what happens to us if you fellas lose this war the Dark Lord wants to wage?"

"He won't."

"Lost before," Greyback pointed out, grinning in a way that made Severus suppress a shudder. "To a baby. I ain't never been bested by a baby."

Severus almost replied with, 'You've never met Harry Evans,' but refrained in favour of saying, "Evans' survival was a fluke. It won't happen again if the Dark Lord decides to kill him."

"Funny, 'cause I hear Evans got away without a scrape in February."

"Then you heard wrong," Severus said sharply. "Evans was tortured and would have died if the Ministry hadn't turned up when they did, which they only did because of a tracking charm on Evans. It won't happen again; the Dark Lord learns from his mistakes."

Greyback scratched another line in the table. "I'm just not convinced, but I tell you what—you go scurrying back to your Dark Lord and tell him I might come around if he can offer me something a bit more… chewy… than future potential freedom, you get me?"

All too well.

Since then Severus had negotiated more, going back and forth between Greyback and Voldemort until an agreement was reached. When he wasn't with Greyback, he spent his time at the hospital turning it into something vaguely habitable and placing the spells to protect it from undesirables. He didn't mind that; it let him learn the layout, gave him chances to eavesdrop, and let him sneak a few extra charms on the place.

It also amused him. Crabbe and Goyle refused to do any DIY spells because it was considered women's work—those kind of spells came under household charms—which was the exact opposite of how Muggles viewed things. Yet cooking, which Muggles saw as women's work, was something Goyle delighted in doing.

He was never allowed to see the Assistant in that time, and Crabbe and Goyle were forbidden from talking about him to Severus. It left him both extremely curious and worried. He just feared what it meant for him that he wasn't trusted to even see the man; it'd taken a lot on Severus' part to convince Voldemort he was still loyal now that Voldemort knew the prophecy and the truth of Harry's parentage.

"You must have defied me thrice," Voldemort had pointed out when he broke into Severus' home. Severus had managed to convince him that the acts of defiance were minor ones, but he knew he'd be proving himself for a long time to come.

It was nearly the end of July when he finally reached an agreement with Greyback, after getting permission from Voldemort to resort to threats. They both knew the werewolf was only pushing his limits and was more than eager to join Voldemort's side. The only reason Greyback led the werewolves who would follow Voldemort was because he was the most vicious, but he was short-sighted; he didn't care what Voldemort could do for werewolves in the long term, he just wanted the chance to attack more people now.

The Assistant was free by then, though Severus couldn't figure out why. He was restricted to the hospital and made a nuisance of himself insisting on helping Severus fix the place up. Severus was glad to throw the whole task on him when Voldemort, as a reward for bringing Greyback around, finally granted Severus leave to go where he pleased.

He knew it was a test, to see if he'd go running straight to Dumbledore when he hadn't been granted permission to yet. Severus knew it was when he noticed Tara Williams following him. He was a both insulted and a bit disappointed; the girl had been his student a year ago, but he'd still expect better stalking from someone who worked for the Department of Mysteries. She wasn't hard to miss when she was hanging around Cokeworth, his hometown.

Worse than that, there were spells on his home to detect if he left, otherwise it would have been easy enough to sneak out. During the first war, Severus had created a secret exit between his bedroom and the house next door, in case he was discovered as a spy and the Death Eaters came for him. From there, a tunnel continued on through the next six houses. He'd only gone that far because the seventh had been occupied at the time, but it was empty now and he made a mental note to extend it further when he had the time.

Still, he might not be able to leave, but it didn't stop him sending messages. He couldn't send a letter even if he had an owl, as Williams would see it leave, and a Patronus was out of the question—Williams wouldn't see it, but Severus couldn't know where Dumbledore was or who he was with.

His fireplace, fortunately, was safe. Every Death Eater with any power in the Ministry had been arrested in February, and they might be able to place charms _on_ his house but they certainly couldn't get _in_ it. They were also limited in what they could put on his house without disturbing his own spells, which they'd obviously tried not to do, no doubt hoping he wouldn't notice the surveillance.

Dumbledore wasn't in office when Severus called so he left a message with the portraits then slumped in his armchair with the bottle of vodka he never got to drink at the beginning of the summer, trying to drink away the urge to follow the charm on the emerald pendant.

He hadn't noticed the change two days ago. The temperature was almost equal to that of his body so he didn't realise it was active until he'd taken a shower at the hospital and noticed the pendant not warming under the hot water. All he wanted to do was run out and check on Harry right then, even knowing how unwelcome his presence would be.

Dumbledore got back to him when the bottle was nearly finished. It had been more than half empty to begin with, so Severus was still sober enough to speak with him, although once he mentioned where he'd been for the past three weeks Dumbledore told him to say nothing more.

"Can you come see me? This isn't something to discuss over the floo."

"My house is being watched," Severus told him, knelt in front of the fireplace, "and they've put monitoring charms up to see when I come and go."

Dumbledore nodded, looking neither surprised nor bothered. "Those sorts of charms never register house elves, however. If you write everything down, I'll send one to pick it up."

"You want me to write down my interactions with the Dark Lord? Are you mad? If it falls into the wrong hands—"

"I shall be sure to send a house elf I trust and ask they return straight to me once they have received the information. Shall I send one tomorrow evening?"

Dumbledore had an expression that Severus knew better than to argue with, so he just sighed and agreed.

"Excellent. Well then—"

"Wait." Severus leant forward, heart suddenly racing, afraid that Dumbledore would vanish before—"Where's…?"

He touched his chest, knowing Dumbledore would get the message.

"Safe," Dumbledore answered simply, but his gaze was compassionate and that one word was all Severus needed.

* * *

For a few days, Harry stayed home with Sirius. Remus came over once, briefly, but someone had to stay with James at Grimmauld Place so he couldn't stay. Harry knew all about the Order of the Phoenix, but he wasn't permitted to be part of it.

"I tried to convince Dumbledore," Sirius told him apologetically, "but he insists you're not suited to it. I think he thinks you're too young."

"I don't care," Harry replied perfectly honestly. "It's not my job to fight Voldemort."

Sirius took some convincing of that, but it was true. Harry made his decision after talking to the Assistant and he wasn't changing it now.

The Order hadn't been told the truth about Harry's parentage. None of them had seen Snape in weeks and James said it should be up to Harry. Harry wasn't sure what he wanted; he hated to admit Snape was his father, but it might be weird pretending James was. In the end he decided to go to Grimmauld Place and see what it was like interacting with James before he decided anything.

He wrote to his friends in those few days. He had a pile of letters from Hermione, a few from Neville, and one each from Cid and Tyler. Cid and Tyler clearly hadn't bothered writing again after getting no response to their first letter, which wasn't surprising when neither were big letter writers in the first place, but Hermione's missives were increasingly concerned, filled with platitudes, asking if he was alright, whether things had gone bad with 'his father', and even wondering once whether he didn't want to be friends any more. Neville's were fewer and less dramatic, but still expressed concern.

He wrote back to them all, making sure to pen a particularly long one to Hermione. He told her the truth of where he'd been for the past month, but not why he'd run away, and he hesitated to even admit that much. It was a surprising revelation even to himself, that he didn't want to share this with her, his first ever friend. He knew they'd been growing apart over the years, not sharing a house, but it was only now that he realised how much. He was no closer to her, or Neville, than he was to Cid or Tyler.

He also wrote to Draco, thanking him again for his hospitality and, after lots of hesitation and worrying whether it was appropriate, briefly expressing sympathy for Lucius' imprisonment. The man deserved it, but that didn't mean Harry didn't realise it must be hard for Draco to lose his father. He didn't sign the letter, but ended it with a question: _You still want to be friends?_

He and Sirius left for Grimmauld Place on his birthday, a fact he didn't realise until, after reading the slip of paper from Dumbledore and going through the fireplace to the kitchen of Grimmauld Place, he was greeted by a bunch of people yelling, "Happy Birthday!" while a large banner on the wall honked like a geese and flashed birthday greetings in alternating colours, lighting the room up like a disco club.

On the table itself was a cake and a pile of gifts, and stood around it was a variety of people—Remus and James; Ginny, Fred, George, Ron, and a woman Harry assumed was their mother; a bloke who wouldn't have looked out of place selling drugs on the streets of London; and a woman with spiky pink hair and a grin like Sirius'.

Harry covered his eyes with one hand. "Please make that banner stop flashing," he said, speaking loudly over the honking noise

"I told you he wouldn't like it," he heard Ginny say.

"What's wrong with our banner?" Presumably Fred or George, though Harry had no idea which.

"Everything," Ginny said.

"It's an awful noise," agreed a female voice.

"It's going to give me a seizure," Harry said.

Someone gasped. "You take that down right now!"

"Alright, alright, keep your knickers on, mum."

There was bustle of noise, the honking stopped, and then Sirius touched his shoulders and said it was safe. Harry lowered his hand to a room now lit by candlelight. Fred looked disgruntled, but everyone else showed varying degrees of relief.

Sirius introduced Mrs Weasley and the two strangers—Mundungus Fletcher and Sirius' cousin Nymphadora Tonks—and then James said, "You should blow out your candles."

Everyone in the room seemed to hold their breath. Harry felt himself flush at the scrutiny, staring at the cake because he didn't know where else to look. It was round and covered in white icing with 'Happy Birthday Harry' in blue letters.

He approached the table, bent and blew them out. There was a smatter of applause and Mrs Weasley took charge of cutting it and handing pieces around. Beneath the icing it was chocolate.

"Last time I was with you on your birthday," James said as Harry took a seat, "you weren't really old enough to blow them out."

"I don't remember," Harry said, not sure what else to say.

"I suppose you wouldn't."

"That's a good thing," Remus said, breaking the tension. "It means you can't remember Sirius almost burning the house down."

"That was not my fault," Sirius insisted, taking the chair beside Harry and accepting a plate from Mrs Weasley.

"You're the one that charmed the candles if I remember rightly."

"He was," James said, smiling slightly.

"You can't act innocent, it was _your_ idea. 'Charm the candles so they never go out,' you said. 'It'll be hilarious,' you said."

"It was quite amusing at first," Remus said. "Even Lily thought so, until…" There was a pause where he, Sirius, and James looked upset and angry, until Remus cleared his throat and finished, "Well, until the curtains caught fire."

After eating, Harry turned to the presents. He received a new summer cloak from the entire Order; a slinky from Ginny and Ron that was charmed to go upstairs as well as down ("Mum said he had to get you something," Ginny told him later; "and don't worry, I asked Bill to charm it, not the twins"); a small box from the twins that he didn't dare open despite their insistence it was perfectly harmless; a box of chocolate frogs from Neville and a sneakoscope from Hermione, whose delivery owls must have been interrupted by Sirius before Harry got them this morning; but the best was his present from Sirius, Remus, and James— _The Complete Encyclopaedia of British Wizarding History, Volumes 1-15_.

"Thank you," he breathed, running his fingers adoringly over the books. "This is amazing."

 _I've figured it out. You don't want to have sex with people because you're too enamoured with books. You're not asexual, you're book-sexual._

"Are you alright?" Remus asked him. "You look a little flustered."

"I'm fine. Just… I'm really grateful for this."

George came up to him and poked his shoulder, staring at Harry suspiciously. "Don't you hate it?"

"Being poked?" Harry asked, baffled. "Yeah, a bit."

"No, that." He pointed at the books.

Harry laid both hands over them, glaring at him. "Of course not! You touch my books and I'll hex your hands off, I swear it. Stay away from them, Weasley."

"I think he means it, George," Fred said, sidling up on Harry's other side. "Maybe he's sick?"

"What? I'm not sick. What are you—stop that!" He slapped Fred's hand away from his forehead.

"Maybe he's just a missorted Ravenclaw," George mused.

"Hufflepuff, actually," Ginny said from the other side of the table.

"You were nearly a Hufflepuff?" Tonks asked Harry, who nodded. "Damn, that would have been cool. I'm a former Hufflepuff myself."

"Didn't the hat say anything about putting you in Gryffindor?" Sirius asked almost desperately, helping himself to another slice of cake.

"Nope," Harry said, and grinned when Sirius moaned dramatically.

* * *

Sirius had warned Harry the Grimmauld Place was unpleasant, including a warning about his mother's portrait, but it hadn't quite prepared Harry. There were still dust patches in his bedroom and the very next day he was set to work with the Weasleys on helping clean the place out. There had been a house elf, apparently, but it hadn't worked since Mrs Black died and Sirius had given it clothes when he looked in on the house after he gained his freedom.

James came to see him on his first night there, turning up at Harry's bedroom door while he was flicking through his new books. He hadn't unpacked; he didn't really want to put his clothes in the wardrobe for fear of what might end up in them, so he was leaving everything in his trunk.

"Hey," James greeted, awkward and tense, laying his hands on the doorframe then dropping them to his sides.

Harry closed Volume Three of _The Complete Encyclopaedia_. "Hi."

He'd never really got a good look at James back in June so he took the chance now. At first glance, James looked just like an older version of the man in his pictures, the man Harry spent years thinking was his father.

But at a closer look Harry saw the paleness in his face, the sharp cheekbones from what must be years of underfeeding, and a general air of depression. In the pictures, James had always looked happy. Even when he wasn't smiling, there was something in his eyes that betrayed a boy who'd grown up privileged, never knowing hardship or real loss. That was gone now. The look in James' eyes now was one Harry recognised, one of world wariness, of trusting no one around you.

"I didn't actually put anything towards those," James said, pointing at the book. "I don't have any money right now, but Sirius said I could put my name on the card."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't think about the money. I suppose I have to give it back now."

"No, I didn't mean to—it's half yours," James said. "Lily was still your mother. I'm not going to take away all your money; I doubt Snape would give you any."

"I wouldn't want it," Harry muttered, looking down at his book. "I don't want anything from him."

"Remus said you've never got along with him," James said, stepping into the room. "It must be difficult not getting on with your head of house."

Harry shrugged, then admitted, "I didn't always hate him. He helped me with my epilepsy and stuff. But…"

"Did he do something?"

Harry considered being honest, but eventually just settled or saying, "He failed me, and just when I was beginning to forgive him, he failed me again. I don't care what anyone says; he's not my father."

"You want to let everyone keep thinking I am?"

Harry looked up. "I… yeah, I guess, I'd like… but is it going to be awkward? What do you want to do?"

James moved further in, shutting the door. "I don't mind. I… I'd like to have a good relationship with you, even though I'm not your father. I don't mind pretending, if that's what you want. People will expect things to be a bit awkward between us anyway."

"I guess so. I think I'd like that."

James smiled at him. "Can we talk then? If I'm going to pretend to be your dad, I should get to know you. Right now all I know is you like books and history."

Harry had to smile at that. "That pretty much covers it, but sure, we can talk."


	23. Chapter 23

**Chapter 23**

Goyle squeaked. Voldemort gave an aggrieved sigh. The Assistant, laying on the floor under the kitchen table, could easily imagine the irked expression on his face even if he couldn't currently see it. The kitchen was the most well repaired room in the entire hospital, looking almost as it must have done when the hospital was functional, except for the use of candles in place of electric lighting.

"Where's Andrew?" Voldemort asked, clearly deciding not to comment on the state of the kitchen, which was currently filled with a maze of plastic tubes designed for exercising and entertaining rodents.

"Um…" The Assistant squirmed forward a little, turned his head and looked around the kitchen, then answered, "About to fall into the sink, from where he'll have to pass through the pantry to get out. I think. Or possibly through the cooling cabinets and down—"

"Do you mean to tell me that that gerbil is my servant?"

"Hamster, actually, but yes."

Voldemort drew his wand and with a wave the maze collapsed. The Assistant watched it all crash down around him, not moving until the noise faded and Goyle, at a flick of Voldemort's wand, returned to human form and picked himself up out of the mess. The Assistant wriggled out from under the table and got to his knees, dusting off his front.

"I spent all morning building that."

"I am growing weary of you, Assistant."

"I'm growing weary of being stuck in this hospital, my lord. It's been weeks and you haven't even let me down to the village to get laid. We carry on like this and I'll have to resort to shagging Cal or Andy here, and let's face it, they're no one's ideal bed mates. Unless you're willing," the Assistant added with a suggestive wiggle of his eyebrows.

Voldemort's response was to hit him with the Cruciatus Curse.

"Y'know," the Assistant said after, "I'd be less inclined to make annoying comments if you'd give me something to do." He got to his feet, waving a hand to vanish the mess of broken tubes, and faced Voldemort. "In all seriousness, my lord, there's little point in having me if you don't use me."

"I will use you when I have need to. For now, you will return to your room."

The Assistant clenched his jaw, but nodded stiffly and bowed before stalking past him and out the room.

* * *

With so many people living in and moving through Grimmauld Place, Harry couldn't clean it with his Wish Magic, as he'd have liked. He was resigned to doing things the Muggle way, like Ron and Ginny, which was terribly tedious. The twins, Mrs Weasley, and others who occasionally helped out could use magic, but most of the work was elbow grease.

The only cheat route he took was getting Mrs Black's portrait off the wall. A Permanent Sticking Charm kept it in place, but if they made too much noise then she would start screaming about blood traitors and defilers. Harry hated it so one night Wished for it to fall off the wall. Sirius and Remus knew he was behind it, but everyone else believed it'd fallen of its own accord.

A few days after his arrival, there was a full Order meeting. Harry, along with the Weasley children and James, weren't allowed to attend. James clearly hated being treated like one of the kids, and Harry wondered if that was why his psychiatrist, Sam, had come to speak with him at the same time as the meeting. It seemed too tidy to be a coincidence, but Sam came twice a week so it might be.

Harry was planning to read for the duration of the meeting, but he was just picking a book from _The Complete Encyclopaedia_ when Fred and George Apparated in with loud _CRACK_.

"God _damnit!_ "

"Hiya Harry," Fred greeted, throwing an arm around his shoulders. Harry shrugged him off.

"Didn't your mother teach you about things like personal privacy?"

"Funny you should mention that," George said, "because actually we were hoping you'd give us a hand with something."

"Or rather, an eye."

Harry looked between them suspiciously. "You want me to spy on the meeting? What's the use when we can't hear what they're saying?"

"You can see what they're doing, Evans," Fred said in an exasperated tone. "We can at least figure out something."

"We do have a great idea for a listening device called Extendable Ears," George remarked, "but finances aren't what they should be."

"And overbearing parents aren't as encouraging as they could be," Fred muttered.

"What d'you mean?" Harry asked, but Fred waved a dismissive hand.

"It's nothing."

There was a knock at the door then it opened before Harry could call for entry, and Ginny and Ron came in. Ron looked no more pleased to see Harry than he ever did; their shared living hadn't made him like Harry any more, but he kept any unpleasant comments to himself since Sirius overheard him being rude and dropped a spider down the back of his shirt. It might have been funny except it turned out Ron was scared witless of spiders, something Sirius hadn't known, which took the humour out of it.

"So, will you do it?" Ginny asked, clearly aware of what the twins had come here for.

 _Go on, you know you want to, and you're not getting anything done with this lot hanging about._

"Fine," he grumbled, sitting on the bed, swivelling his magical eye to look down at the kitchen as the others all sat down as well. There were a lot of people down there, most of them he didn't know, but he did see Kirith among them. He would have to talk to her later. He'd run out of his anticonvulsant while on the run and must have missed his yearly appointment. He wasn't worried about that happening late, but he needed more of his potion.

"Well?" Ginny asked.

"They're talking and looking at a bunch of scrolls," Harry told them.

"What's on the scrolls?" George asked.

"I can't pick out that kind of detail from this far. I think it might be a map. Bill's pointing at something on it and—wait, Moody's about to—argh!"

He jerked back, blinking furiously, vision filled with white spots.

"You alright? What happened?"

He shook his head to try and clear his vision and looked back at the kitchen, but it was like looking at a solid black box.

"I think Moody realised what I was doing, he shot a burst of light at me. I can't see in anymore, they must have charmed it."

"Well that was a waste of time," Ron said, getting up and slouching out the door again.

"Worth a try," Ginny said.

"So what were you talking about earlier?" Harry asked the twins. "Extendable Ears?"

"It's just an idea we have," Fred said dismissively.

"One of many," George sighed.

"What, to invent? Joke things like you were telling Sirius about last term?"

Fred and George looked at each other and Harry got the impression they managed to have a silent conversation in the space of seconds, then Fred said, "We're only telling you this because you're the son of one Marauder and godson to another."

"We've got loads of ideas for joke shop items and we'd really love to start our own joke shop."

"But we haven't got the finances. We want to go to Gringotts for a loan—"

"—but our mother doesn't approve of our career plans and we're stuck in the house."

"Not to mention we can't be sure they'd give us one anyway, even with a good word from Bill."

"He works there," George explained when Harry frowned. "He used to be a curse breaker working in Egypt, but he got a desk job so he can join the Order."

Harry looked between them, thinking for a moment, then said, "I can give you money."

 _You'd better not. That's our money._

'My money,' Harry thought, biting his lip to stop from replying out loud. 'And you're the one who says I've got too much and nothing to spend it on.'

 _Not so much if you're planning to give half of it to your step-daddy._

"We don't need charity, Evans," Fred said sharply.

 _At least lend it instead of giving it away,_ the voice suggested, which was reasonable enough.

"It's not charity, it's a loan. A business start up. I think you guys opening a joke shop is a great idea and I think Sirius and Remus and… and James would approve too."

At least the James that Sirius and Remus had told him about; he didn't know enough about James as he was to say for sure.

"How much do you need to start a business? Five hundred galleons? More? Less? I can't give you everything, obviously, but we can figure it out, right?"

The twins exchanged a look, then George asked, "Are you sure about this?"

Harry nodded. "Like I said, I've got plenty of money and nothing to do with it, and you've got a great idea. You can pay me back or make me a business partner or however these things work. It's a win-win situation."

"You know, Evans," Fred began, grinning.

"You're not so bad for a Slytherin," George finished.

* * *

Harry spent the rest of the afternoon with Ginny until they were called down to dinner. A few of the Order members had remained, including Kirith, and she promised she'd get him an emergency dose of his potion to last until his next appointment, which probably wouldn't be until after the new school term began.

"I'll try and make it a Saturday appointment for you," she said. "I know how much you like school."

"Thanks."

They talked with the rest of the table as they ate, but after they'd finished Kirith asked Harry for a private word and they went up to a dusty, drab dining room on the ground floor.

"I just wanted to ask you how everything is at home," she said, shutting the door behind them.

Harry looked at her in surprise. "It's fine. Why?"

"I know Professor Snape is your father, remember? I was there when you came yelling at James in the Hospital Wing. I know it was difficult for you to learn, and I know Professor Snape and your godfather don't get along, so I want to make sure things are alright at home. That your relationship with Sirius hasn't been badly affected by this news."

"It's not," he assured her. "Me and Sirius are fine."

"What about you and James?"

"We're okay. He doesn't mind pretending so I don't have to tell everyone the truth. He seems nice enough. And he is technically my step-father. I'd rather have him than Snape."

"Because he never told you?"

"Because he left me with my aunt and uncle. I'm supposed to be his… and he just left me there, and then he had the nerve to act like a guardian to me when I got to Hogwarts. He had no right to do that."

The dining table and chairs started to rattle against the floor and Harry forced himself to breathe in deep and let it out slowly, getting his magic back under control so they stopped. Kirith glanced around at them, but didn't seem overly surprised, and then looked back and said, "I've got a friend working in psychiatry. If you want, I can get you a referral. It might—"

 _NO!_ the voice shouted, and Harry echoed it, then, when Kirith looked startled, added, "Sorry, I just… I don't need to see a psychiatrist."

 _Last thing I need is you getting friendly with some head shrink and spilling the beans on me._

"Alright," Kirith said calmly. "If you change your mind, drop me an owl. I'm always happy to help my favourite patient. I've got to be off, but I'll send those potions along this evening. You look after yourself, and no more running off, you hear?"

He smiled at that and promised he wouldn't.

* * *

The next day, they started on cleaning the drawing room. They spent the morning beating a doxy infestation out of the curtains, and then after a lunch they cleared out the cabinets, which proved harder than expected because certain items were reluctant to leave the dusty shelves and others were hexed or jinxed. Harry got distracted by a book titled _Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy_ until Sirius snatched it from him to flatten a pair of many-legged tweezers that tried to stab Ginny when she picked them up.

They found a locket that wouldn't open for any of them so Sirius said to throw it out, but the voice hissed at Harry, _Take it._

Harry wasn't sure why he didn't argue, why he Wished it invisible, made a duplicate, and tossed that in the rubbish instead while he pocketed the real thing. He inspected it later, in his borrowed room with the door locked. It was as large as a chicken's egg, inlaid with many small green stones in the shape of an _S_ , glinting dully in the candle light of the room.

"Why did I steal this?" he muttered, falling back against the pillows and holding it up by the chain, watching it spin slightly.

 _Because,_ murmured the voice.

"Because what? It's ugly, it won't open, and there's no point in me selling it even if it's worth anything."

But the voice, for once, was silent. He sighed, tucked it under his pillow, and rolled over to sleep.

Earlier in the year, after the second Triwizard task, Harry had had nightmares about Voldemort's resurrection, but they tapered off with time.

That night, he had one again, but it was different. When the smoke from the cauldron faded to reveal the figure within the mist, it was Tom Riddle instead of Voldemort. When he dispelled the glass coffin, he didn't charm the water around Harry's gills, but knelt down and kissed him as Harry struggled to breathe. It was cold and slimy, and Harry felt like his insides were suddenly doused in ice, and when Riddle pulled away Harry's last breath left him in a coil of steamed ice, floating out of Harry's mouth and into Riddle's, and Harry realised it was his soul, that Riddle's kiss had been that of a Dementor.

He woke up then, gasping and drenched in a cold sweat, and didn't get back to sleep until the sun was peeking through the curtains.

* * *

A few days later, Sirius and Remus interrupted Harry as he read in his bedroom, asking "Hey, kid, can we have a word?"

"About what?"

"Severus," Remus said, leaning against the chest of drawers while Sirius sat on the bed by Harry.

Harry scowled. "Nothing to talk about."

"Harry, we understand why you're angry at him—"

"No, you don't. You can't understand any of it."

"You're not the only one that came from a bad family, kid," Sirius said. "You're not even the only one to run away from home. I did."

"You did?"

"You met my mother. You really surprised I wanted to get away from this place?"

Harry shrugged, looking down. "It's not the same."

"No, but I get what it's like to hate your parents."

"I'm still not talking about it. He hates me, I hate him. That's all there is to it."

"He doesn't hate you, Harry," Remus said.

"If that was true, he wouldn't have left me with the Dursleys. I'm not talking about it," he said again, staring down at his book and hoping they got the message.

 _It's no use wishing Sirius was your dad. We'd still have been abandoned as a baby. He went off and got thrown in prison, remember?_

He bit his lip, and thought back, 'He might not have if he had a kid to look after.'

 _He_ _ **did**_ _have a kid to look after. He was supposed to look after you, his godson, but he was more interested in revenge. Face it, adults are unreliable and only interested in you so long as you don't interfere with the rest of their lives._

"Harry," Remus said, and Harry looked up irritably.

"I said I'm not talking about it."

"We need to talk about it," Sirius snapped, snatching Harry's book away. "Snape's a member of the Order. One day he's going to show up here and we need to be sure you can deal with that."

"You told me he was missing," Harry said accusingly. "Did you lie to me?"

Sirius looked offended at the suggestion. "No, I've never lied to you, kid."

"He contacted Dumbledore a few days after you turned up," Remus explained. "For now, he's only been in contact with Dumbledore, but even if he doesn't come to an Order meeting, you'll have to face him at school. Can you do that without your magic lashing out?"

"Yes."

 _Liar,_ muttered the voice, and it was clear Remus and Sirius didn't believe him, either.

"Fine, maybe I can't," Harry snapped. "So what? What do you want me to do? It's not like he wouldn't deserve it."

"I completely agree," Sirius said. "Trust me, I'm all in agreement for you hating Snape. The man's a bastard and if it was just him at risk of getting hurt then we wouldn't be having this conversation. But your magic is volatile and that's going to be a problem for your Potions lessons where you could hurt the other students."

 _You could always just direct your anger so that only Snape gets hurt. That would hardly be a loss. Might be messy though, blowing up Snape. There'd be blood and guts everywhere. It'd definitely ruin any potion the class was working on, but it would be a one time thing so it might be worth it. Of course there is that slight matter of being imprisoned for murder, but if your godfather can break out I'm sure we can._

Harry bit his lip, restraining a laugh. He noticed Sirius and Remus exchanging looks and scowled.

"I'll control myself in the classroom."

"And if you can't?" Sirius said.

Harry looked between him and Remus. "You've already figured it out, haven't you? You want me to do something?"

"We've come up with a suggestion," Remus said. "You could take a Draught of Peace before each Potions lesson. It's not as strong a sedative as the Calming Draught, but it should keep you relaxed enough not to lash out."

Harry sighed irritably, but it was a valid suggestion and he couldn't see what other option there was. Aside from attacking Snape, which he might still do.

"Fine," he snapped. "I'll take the stupid potion."

They wanted him to try it out before term started, to be sure it'd work, so one day he downed a mouthful of the Draught and sat reading in the kitchen while the Order congregated. When Snape turned up, nothing blew up. Harry still felt his anger, but it was lesser and his magic didn't lash out in response.

Even so, he was glad Snape didn't stick around for dinner after the meeting that day.

* * *

Harry returned the Invisibility Cloak to James and gradually got to know him over the weeks, time he found he enjoyed. James suffered occasional bouts of depression that drove him to shut himself in his room, and sometimes he would snap angrily at people for no reason, even using blood-slurs, but he would apologise earnestly and you could see the regret on him.

"Malfoy told me to say all those things," he confessed to Harry one day. "He beat it into me. I don't really believe any of it—I never did—but it's hard to forget things you learn under torture. Sam is teaching me to do better."

When he spoke about Lily, Harry could see more of the person Sirius and Remus had told him about. On one bad day he called her a Mudblood, but most of the time he spoke of her with clear love and affection, although he looked conflicted and guilty about it. More of Lucius' teachings—making him feel bad for loving someone that wasn't up to Lucius' pureblood standards.

It made Harry feel a little guilty about communicating with Draco, but not enough to stop. He reminded himself that Draco wasn't Lucius, that he hadn't known about James, and when Harry dared to ask what Draco thought of it all, Draco said he hated what his father had done. Harry clung to that; right then, he needed to see Draco being different to his father so that Harry could believe that he wouldn't end up like his.

Draco's first letter, after the one in which Harry asked if he still wanted to be friends, ended with the question _Just friends?_

Harry had let a few days pass before replying, reluctantly spending some time thinking about what he actually thought of sex and relationships. It wasn't like he was _completely_ opposed to sex and its related activities; he had wet dreams and he'd masturbated. He just felt guilty and a little bit dirty about it because his dreams and fantasies never actually involved him directly. He liked imagining other people doing things to each other while he just watched.

And, though he would never, ever admit it, sometimes those dreams had included Draco. Despite that, he was pretty sure he didn't actually fancy Draco. He was good looking, and his kiss had been nice enough by Harry's completely inexperienced standards, but he felt no overwhelming urge to snog him, which he figured was a big indicator of fancying someone. So he wrote back turning Draco down and hoped he wouldn't be too offended.

 _Do you really care if you offend him?_ the voice asked, and Harry realised he actually did.

In the second week of August, he finished writing a letter to him, which he sent back with Draco's eagle owl, who had orders to stay until Harry wrote replies, and decided he'd go to Diagon Alley. The Hogwarts booklists hadn't come yet, but he needed to go to Gringotts and he just wanted to get out of the house. Grimmauld Place was oppressive and it didn't help that he was still having nightmares about getting his soul sucked out. He had to get out for a bit.

Sirius and Remus were both out for once, and James was seeing his therapist, leaving Mrs Weasley in charge of the house for the time being. Harry found her in the kitchen, knitting and humming along to the radio while a cauldron in the fireplace bubbled with a pleasant smell.

"Hello, Harry, dear," she greeted warmly. She was always friendly with him, so much so it made him a bit uncomfortable in truth. "Can I help you with something?"

"I just wanted to let you know I'm going out for a bit."

She stopped knitting. "What on earth are you talking about?"

"I'm going out."

"Don't be ridiculous, you can't go out."

"Why not?"

"Why—?" She stared at him. "There's a madman on the loose, and he's targeting you specifically!"

"Voldemort's got more important things to do than come after me right now. You're in the Order; you must know that."

"That's besides the point! You're fifteen years old, you can't go wandering around London on your own. Just because your father's busy and your godfather's not here doesn't mean you get to go off—"

"Sirius lets me go out," Harry interrupted.

Mrs Weasley scoffed. "I don't believe that."

 _Who does this woman think she is?_

"I don't care what you believe, it's true. No one gets to lock me away, Mrs Weasley. Not Sirius, not James, and especially not you. I only came to tell you I'm going out so you or anyone else didn't get worried."

He turned to go, but a spell shot past him and hit the door. He heard the lock click.

"I can't just let you—"

Harry Wished, turned the handle, and opened the door. He stepped through then looked back.

"Don't ever try to stop me going out again," he said coldly while she looked startled, then turned and walked out. He heard her hurrying to come after him and rushed to the front door. As soon as he was on the front step, he teleported away.

In Diagon Alley, he went to Gringotts first. He opened a new account in his own name, then transferred just over half the funds from the Potter account to it. He didn't bother figuring out how much he'd used in the last few years, but he was sure it was less than 2,000 Galleons, so with that much in compensation from Andrew Hopkins, Harry figured he was entitled to over half the vault's contents.

He also put the locket into the vault. The voice insisted he keep it, but Harry refused to sleep in the same room as it any longer. This was the only way to appease them both, though it occurred to him that he probably shouldn't be giving into the demands of a voice in his head.

He didn't withdraw what he was planning to loan to the twins; the three of them had worked out the maths and when they did their school shopping, the twins would sneak off to open up a business account and Harry would transfer 750 Galleons then. They figured that would be enough to get them up and running, and when they opened their shop they'd name him as a silent business partner, getting ten percent on everything they earned.

With that done, he ambled back through Diagon Alley then out into Muggle London, walking back to Grimmauld Place. It took an hour and he was feeling better by the time he got there, so he was not pleased to get inside and find Mrs Weasley with Sirius, James, and Dumbledore in the kitchen.

Mrs Weasley looked up from a cup of tea and gave a little cry of relief. "Oh, thank heavens, you're safe."

"I never wasn't," Harry said.

"You shouldn't have walked out like that, Harry," Dumbledore said. Harry looked at him. Dumbledore stared at a spot somewhere past Harry's left ear. Even knowing why he was doing it, it made irritation curl in Harry's chest.

"You're not seriously going to try and tell me what to do?"

Mrs Weasley gasped. "Harry, that's the headmaster you're talking to."

"It's alright, Molly," Dumbledore assured her. "I won't tell you what to do in the summer, Harry, but you quite upset Molly by walking out."

"I told her I was leaving," Harry said stubbornly. "I was polite, at least until she tried to hex me."

"I didn't—!"

"Fine, you hexed the door, but you tried to stop me. I'm not one of your kids, you don't get to tell me what to do."

"I do," Sirius said, standing from his chair. "It's just not safe out there right now, kid. You can't go off like you did last summer."

Harry set his face. "Like I told her, Voldemort has more important things to do than chase after me, and I'll tell you again what I told you last summer: if you try to stop me going out when I want, then I'll leave for good and none of you will see me again until school starts."

Mrs Weasley spluttered. "You can't be serious, Harry, dear. You don't understand how serious—"

"No," Harry interrupted, " _you_ don't understand. I've looked after myself my whole life; I don't need anyone trying to do it for me now I'm fifteen. Do you think I had anyone telling me to be careful when I was a kid? No, I had to learn that lesson myself, and I did. The people in this room have put me in more danger than I've ever been in on my own. If I want to go out, then I'm going out; I'll tell you about it so you know when I'm going, but I won't let anyone stop me. If anyone doesn't like that, speak now and I'll leave."

Mrs Weasley gaped at him. Dumbledore stared sadly at his hands. James eyed Harry with some mix of fearful awe. Sirius sighed.

"God, you don't like making life easy, do you, kid?"

"This _is_ the easy option," Harry said.

"You can't be agreeing to this?" Mrs Weasley objected, staring at Sirius in shock. "He's a child!"

"He's really not, Molly."

Mrs Weasley turned on James, who looked startled and afraid at her intense expression. "You say something! You can't want him going out there while You Know Who's about!"

"It's not up to me," James said, edging away from her.

"He's your son!"

"Yes, but…" He looked at Harry, back again. "He made a good point. I haven't looked after him for all these years, I can't just start telling him what to do now."

Mrs Weasley turned to Dumbledore, but he put a hand up before she could even begin. "Molly, I completely agree with you, but I'm afraid Harry's threat isn't empty. Better to know when he leaves than to have him leave entirely, though—" here he looked in Harry's direction "—I would ask you tell us where you're going as well as when, and agree to stay wherever it is you go."

"Fine," Harry agreed begrudgingly. He didn't like it, but it wasn't unreasonable and he suspected he'd just seem like a moody teenager if he refused, which was the exact opposite of what he was trying to claim.

"Excellent!" Dumbledore clapped his hands and stood up. "I'm glad to see you acting like a reasonable young man, Harry."

Harry eyed him suspiciously, but Dumbledore just beamed, said his goodbyes, and left.

* * *

The Assistant sat on his bed with a slingshot, conjuring small pebbles and shooting them at paper aeroplanes whizzing about the room. It was the same room he'd been kept prisoner in before, but so heavily refurbished that it was unrecognisable, with carpets, good furniture, and a wireless radio.

When the door opened, he shot a pebble towards it and was rewarded with the satisfying sound of Crabbe's yelp of surprise as the small rock flew past his ear. The Assistant chuckled, unbothered by the glare the other man gave him.

"You almost hit me!"

"Almost being the key word. If I'd wanted to hit you, I would have. What d'you want, Cal?"

"The Dark Lord wants to see you."

"Huzzah," the Assistant said, leaping off his bed and vanishing the aeroplanes and slingshot, then pausing. "Does he actually want me to do something or is he just in a mood and looking to torture someone?"

"I don't know. Go find out. I'm going home."

The Assistant went, making his way to Voldemort's meeting room, sweeping in and kneeling before Voldemort, murmuring a polite greeting then standing when Voldemort told him to rise.

"Tell me, Harry, have you ever been imprisoned in Azkaban?"

"A few times."

"Do the Dementors drain your powers as much as they do anyone else?"

"I'm weakened but I can still do magic around them if I'm not chained with magic suppressants, although I've never let myself stay in their presence for any longer than a year; I don't know what an extended stay would do to me."

"In that case, I have work for you, Assistant."

* * *

Late one evening, a tall man with dark red hair that reached his waist was found attempting to break into the Minister's office at the Ministry of Magic. When apprehended, the man gave his name as Gareth Martin but had no identification nor a wand—he attempted to enter Amelia's office using a set of Muggle lockpicks—and he stunk of alcohol and carried several vials of Spinaspectus Potion, an illegal hallucinogenic, which he claimed he planned to plant in the Minister's office in an attempt to get her arrested, or at least stripped of her position. He was sentenced to five years in Azkaban for trespassing and possession of illegal substances.

* * *

"I think that's everything," Albus said, finishing his latest report on the Order's activities. He leant forwards to put his empty teacup on Amelia's desk and opposite him the Minister For Magic set down her own cup and removed her monocle, tucking it into a little pocket on her robes.

"Actually, Albus, there's one other thing I wanted to discuss."

Albus folded his hands in his lap and looked at her attentively.

"The Defence position."

"Oh," Albus said.

"You haven't found anyone yet."

"No," he admitted, "however—"

Amelia shook her head. "It's nearly the end of the summer holiday. If you haven't found someone now, you won't in the next few days. The letters need to be sent out, Albus. God knows what the new Muggleborns must be thinking when they were promised booklists that haven't come. I'm assigning you someone."

Albus frowned. "Amelia, that's really not necessary."

" _Have_ you got someone?"

"No, but—"

"Then it is," she said with finality. "Albus, I'm sorry. You know I respect you, but the Board of Governors are pushing it too."

Albus sighed. "Very well. Who have you picked?"

"Dolores Umbridge."

There was a moment's silence. Albus looked at Amelia. Amelia looked at her desk and shuffled some papers.

Eventually, after the silence grew awkward, Amelia looked up apologetically. "I know what you think of her and I can't say I'm happy to have her teaching my niece, but she's the only one I can spare. She's not making my work easy and after Preston Yaxley and so many others were arrested in February, and now You Know Who's escape, I just can't spare my good people, Albus. At least you'll only have her for a year. It gives you time to find someone else."

* * *

To Harry's consternation, Mrs Weasley took a disliking to him. He wouldn't have cared, except it turned out she warned her children not to get friendly with him. Ginny completely disregarded this warning, thankfully, but if Mrs Weasley found them together she would miraculously have something for Ginny to do somewhere else. Ron was worse; he'd be rude and if Ginny didn't leave with him then he threatened to tell their mother.

Their booklists finally arrived two days before the end of August. They went to Diagon Alley on the last day of the month—Harry and the Weasley children, Sirius, and Bill, who had a day off work and managed to convince Mrs Weasley that he could keep his younger siblings under control.

In point of fact, he let Ron go off with Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas, left Harry and Ginny to Sirius, and went to Gringotts to help the twins set up a business account.

Ginny had to buy new robes, so Harry promised to stay in Flourish and Blotts while she and Sirius went to the secondhand clothes shop. It was no hardship; he could easily spend long enough in the bookshop that the others could finish all their shopping before he was ready to leave.

He stood by the Defence Against the Dark Arts books when Draco snuck up on him. The assigned book didn't look impressive and, given their history of Defence teachers, Harry wanted something useful for the possibility of yet another Lockhart.

For a moment after Draco appeared, neither boy spoke, and then Draco said, "You can see me, can't you?"

"Yep."

Draco sighed, shifting to stand beside him, turning to lean back against the bookcase and folding his arms over his chest. "Well I suppose you don't have to worry about anyone stabbing you in the back, but heaven forbid someone try to romantically sneak up on you."

"Is that what that was?" Harry asked lightly.

 _Did you just_ _ **flirt**_ _with him?_ the voice asked incredulously.

'No! That wasn't flirting.'

 _Sounded like flirting. Looked like flirting._

'It wasn't. Was it?'

The voice just laughed at him.

Draco scoffed. "Romanticism is best left to Hufflepuffs, Gryffindors, and eighteenth century artists, and you turned me down, remember?"

Harry glanced at him with his normal eye, but didn't mention their following correspondence, which had included Draco asking if there was ever the chance of them getting together, and Harry replying that there was a very minor possibility.

"Are you here with your mother?"

Draco nodded. "She's at Gringotts. I'm just getting my books before meeting her at Twilfits and Tattings. I'm getting some new robes to go with my new status."

Harry frowned, pulling a book off the shelf. "New status?"

"You're talking to Slytherin's newest prefect."

"You made prefect?"

Draco looked offended. "You thought I wouldn't?"

Harry shrugged, looking down at the book and flipping it open to check the table of contents. "I didn't think about it at all, but it could just as easily have gone to Theo Nott or Blaise Zabini."

"You offend me, Evans. I'm clearly the only choice for prefect."

"If you say so. Who's the other one?"

Draco shrugged. "I don't know yet, but I'd be willing to put money on Pansy."

"Really?"

"Well it won't go to Millicent Bulstrode; she's too thick. Tracey Davis got caught shagging Montague in a classroom last spring and she's got a record for hexing people, so she won't get it, and Daphne Greengrass… well, she's about as remarkable as an owl in an owlery. She probably didn't even occur to Snape as an option."

"You hex people," Harry pointed out, ignoring the mention of Snape, whose mere name made him angry.

"Yes, but I don't get caught, so it's unimportant."

Harry rolled his eyes, but he was smiling.

"Hey, kid, you ready?" Sirius' voice called, and then he and Ginny came around the shelf. "Oh," Sirius said at seeing Draco. "What are you doing here?"

"Don't be rude," Harry scolded.

"I'll see you at school," Draco said quietly to Harry, then shot Sirius a dirty look before turning and walking away.

"Are you actually friends with him?" Ginny asked. "After what his dad did to yours…"

Harry had his magical eye on Draco, standing just beyond the bookcase, out of normal sight but not hearing distance. He thought about saying something mean, just to make a point about eavesdroppers, but he didn't want to lie about this. "Draco isn't his father; he's not to blame for what Lucius did."

On the other side of the bookcase, Draco relaxed, smiled, and headed off.


	24. Chapter 24

**Chapter 24**

On the morning of 1st September, two gleaming black Ministry cars arrived to take Harry and the other children to King's Cross Station. Although they appeared ordinary, they slid through gaps that looked far too small for them and jumped to the head of traffic queues, delivering them to the station in plenty of time.

Sirius, Mrs Weasley, and Sirius' cousin Tonks accompanied them to the station. Tonks, Harry gathered, was there as a guard, in case Voldemort or his remaining Death Eaters showed up to try anything, which seemed ridiculously unlikely to Harry.

James had considered coming, but in the end decided he couldn't face the crowds that would be at King's Cross.

As the Weasleys were saying their goodbyes, Sirius pulled Harry aside and said, "Before you go, kid, I wanted to ask you something. You're getting along with James, right?"

"Yeah," Harry said cautiously. "Why?"

"How would you feel about him moving into our house?"

"Oh. Um…"

"I just really hate that house," Sirius said. "I don't think it's doing James any good, either. It'd be nice if he could move in with us instead, but I wanted to make sure you're happy with that."

"Yeah. I mean, I'm not even there most of the time, so… but I don't mind. I didn't really like that house, either."

Sirius grinned. "Great. You'd best get off then. Have a good year, stay in trouble."

" _In_ trouble?"

Sirius just winked at him, and Harry laughed, hugged him, and boarded the train.

He shared a compartment with Cid, Tyler, and Alex Stone for the trip. Alex looked different this year, and not just because he'd grown and finally thrown off all his baby fat. Something in his eyes was different, and he'd lost his carefree, childish, optimistic attitude, and it made him look different in a way Harry couldn't really define.

Hermione came by the compartment shortly after lunch, stopping briefly to say hi and ask where Neville was.

"He's not with you?" Harry asked.

"I had to go to the prefect carriage when we left London," she explained, and Harry's gaze dropped to the red and gold badge pinned to her robes. He hadn't thought about the fifth year prefects even after seeing Draco in Diagon Alley yesterday, but he wasn't surprised Hermione became one.

"Who's the other Gryffindor one?" he asked.

"Dean Thomas." She paused, then said, "Malfoy's one, too. And that cow Pansy Parkinson."

"Shock horror," Tyler muttered.

Hermione left again and Harry, Cid, Tyler, and Alex discussed who in their year might be prefect. They all agreed that Ed Coleman would be one of Ravenclaws, and would also be their headboy when they reached seventh year ( _when_ _ **they**_ _do,_ the voice whispered inside Harry's head; _you'll be dead by then_ ). Cid and Tyler were convinced Harry would be the Slytherin prefect, because Cid got in trouble too much for his foul language and Tyler tended to slack off on his school work.

"And if you don't get it, Devaux will," Cid said. "He'd be impossible to share a dorm with."

In mid-afternoon, Harry's bladder forced him to leave the carriage. On the way back he came across Fred and George Weasley laughing raucously as they shoved Draco from a compartment. Draco had blood pouring from his nose, soaking the front of his robes and making his already pale face look bone white in comparison, and he retched, dropping to one knee as he vomited all over the floor. Harry pushed through the crowd of onlookers, none of whom moved to help and several of which were laughing.

"What the hell did you do?" he asked the twins, crouching by Draco.

 _Tried to kill him by the looks of things._

"We needed someone to test our the Skiving Snackboxes we mixed up last night," Fred answered, still grinning. "He volunteered."

"Volun- he's bleeding all over the place. He can't breathe, for Merlin's sake. Have you got a cure?"

"What for? The snake deserves it for what he did to your dad."

Fury filled Harry. He only just thought to draw his wand and point it at Draco, murmuring nonsense as he Wished for the nosebleed and the vomiting to stop. When he was sure Draco was no longer in danger of suffocating or choking, he straightened up, turning on the Gryffindors. The humour left their faces as he raised his wand, face furious.

"Lucius Malfoy imprisoned James, not Draco," Harry snarled. "Draco didn't even know about it."

"Like hell he didn't," George said. "Your dad—"

"Is _my_ fucking dad!" Harry yelled. "Not yours! Draco had nothing to do with it. I believe that and I'm the only person it should matter to. If you—or anyone else," he said, looking around at the people watching all along the corridor and poking their heads out of compartments, "attack Draco again because of some misguided need to take revenge for James Potter, you can answer to me. Draco is my friend; I'm not going to let anyone attack him for what his father did."

He stalked forwards then and grabbed George's arm, standing on tip toes so he could hiss in the other boy's ear, "I gave you that money to start your shop, not to make things you can use to bully people. Don't make me regret it."

He vanished the vomit and blood on the floor with a murmured, " _Evanesco_ ," then ordered a group of first years out of a compartment and pulled Draco inside, shutting the door behind them.

"You alright?"

"My robes are _ruined_."

"I'll take that as a yes," Harry said dryly.

"These are brand new, Evans. I'm going to murder those arseholes."

"Do you want me to clean up your face first?"

Draco touched his mouth, lip curling distastefully as he felt the blood covering his face. "That would be appreciated," he muttered. Harry moved his wand in a circular motion in front of Draco's face and silently Wished the blood away then did the same to his robes. Draco watched him, grey eyes fixed on Harry's face.

"I'm pretty sure we don't learn silent casting until sixth year, Evans," he said quietly when Harry finished. Harry pocketed his wand and smiled cheekily.

"You think I read all those books just for fun?"

"Books don't teach people to cast silently."

"They help. Besides, all the other shit in my life, I think I deserve to have a few extra skills that most people don't."

"Oh? What other skills have you got?"

Harry smirked. "I'm not about to spill my secrets that easily, Draco. You'll just have to wait and see."

 _You're flirting again,_ the voice grumbled.

'Shut up,' Harry thought back, and settled down to spend the rest of the journey with Draco.

* * *

At breakfast the next morning, Harry received a package with two dozen test tubes of Draught of Peace and an unsigned note in Snape's handwriting saying that each one would last an hour; for double lessons he'd have to take an extra vial with him.

"That's not your epilepsy potion," Cid remarked, peering nosily across the table. "Something else wrong with you?"

"When is there not?" Harry muttered, lifting the box to take back to Slytherin before classes started. He didn't have Potions until Wednesday, but he was wondering if he should carry a vial about with him. So far, he hadn't even glanced at Snape in the Great Hall and he wasn't sure what'd happen if he bumped into him in a hallway.

He was in the library after classes that day when a voice behind him said, "Is it true you're friends with Malfoy?"

Harry turned from the Ancient Runes shelf. Hermione and Neville stood behind him. His gaze—magical and normal—had been on the bookshelf so he hadn't seen them approach.

"Yes," he said slowly.

"Why?" Hermione asked, but her tone was only curious, not accusatory. Neville looked a touch sceptical, but they hadn't turned their backs on him and stalked away, so he thought that was something.

"We made a connection over the summer."

"Aren't you angry at him for what his father did?" Neville asked like he couldn't imagine Harry not being angry about it.

"Children aren't their parents," Harry replied, a touch coldly. "Draco had nothing to do with what Lucius did to James."

"You really believe that?"

"Yes," Harry replied firmly.

"Alright," Hermione said. "Then we won't doubt you."

"But…?"

She smiled grimly. "But if he hurts you then we'll hex him so much even his mother won't recognise him," she warned, and Harry laughed.

* * *

Harry's first Potions class of the year was on Wednesday and passed without incident. He slipped into a bathroom beforehand to down a dose of Draught of Peace, which kept him relaxed enough that his magic didn't lash out and he could sit through the class without spending the entire time thinking hateful thoughts. It also shut up the voice in his head, for which he was grateful. The voice had extremely violent ideas on what he could do to Snape, and Harry wouldn't be able to concentrate with it muttering spitefully the entire time.

His first Defence class was that day as well, with the squat, toady woman called Professor Umbridge. Word had already got around the school that she held theory only classes, so none of the Slytherin fourth years had their wands out.

At the start of class, Umbridge smiled at them in a way Harry assumed was meant to be warm and friendly but just came off as creepy and condescending. Her first words after introducing herself were to Harry.

"Mr Evans, you are not permitted to wear that eye in school."

Harry tried not to glower at her. "The headmaster allows it."

Umbridge's smile turned cold. "It is a spying device that can be used for cheating and inappropriate behaviour. You will remove it. Now."

 _Oh, I don't like her._

'That makes two of us,' Harry thought. Aloud, he said, "I have to return to my dorm to remove it. That's where my non-magical one is, and I need to put it in its proper jar."

"I'm sure it will be just fine in your pocket."

"My eye has to be stored in the correct optical solution to ensure it remains clean. In my pocket it can get dirty. If it gets dirty, it can cause an infection, which can damage the nerves, which can cause anything from a seizure to permanent brain damage. My healer made it perfectly clear that proper eye care is of the utmost importance to my already precarious health; if you don't believe me, you can check with Madam Pomfrey. With all due respect, professor, either permit me to return to my dorm to change it, or I will not remove my eye."

Umbridge stared at him, a vein twitching in her jaw, and Harry knew she was weighing her options. If she let him keep wearing it then it suggested she approved, but if she made him change it then he got to leave the class and it meant bending to the whims of a student. Either way, it was a minor win for him.

"You will change it immediately after class," she declared eventually. "You will not be permitted to wear it during school hours from now on. Headmaster Dumbledore has been far too lax in his management of this school; no student should be permitted to be in possession of such an object."

 _An object? That's our bodily parts she's talking about. You should channel some of that anger from Snape onto her. Blow up that ugly cardigan. She deserves it._

She stalked back to the front of the classroom and Harry glared at her back, having to restrain himself from literally burning a hole in her back with his gaze.

He thought no class could be more boring than History of Magic, but _Defensive Magical Theory_ was quite possibly the dullest book Harry ever had the misfortune of reading. Within fifteen minutes he officially decided Umbridge was a worse teacher than Lockhart; neither of them actually taught anything, but at least Lockhart had been sort of entertaining. Spending an hour forced to sit in utter silence and trying to focus on the book was enough to drive even him into a dull stupor. He was immensely glad that he bought other Defence books in Diagon Alley and had every intention of charming one of them to look like _Defensive Magical Theory_ in future so he could actually learn something useful in these classes.

He went to Dumbledore after lessons that afternoon, but to his great annoyance Dumbledore said it wouldn't hurt for him to wear the non-magical eye occasionally.

"It's never been a problem before," Harry ground out, clenching his fists and wondering why he'd ever thought Dumbledore would stand up for him.

"No, but every teacher has the right to request you not wear that eye in their classes. Your other teachers have no problem with it, but clearly Professor Umbridge does. I'm sure you can manage a few hours a week without it."

Harry said nothing else, just stormed out before he broke something or hurt someone.

The next time he saw Umbridge, she had an unbearably smug smirk on her face. Harry returned the look with a smirk of his own, satisfied when her expression faltered and she frowned instead, no doubt wondering why he looked unconcerned about apparently having two perfectly normal green eyes. She had no idea he was just Wishing for everyone to think he was wearing the normal eye.

That evening, Harry was reading on a sofa in the Slytherin common room when Draco came up and dropped down beside him, stretching his legs out towards the fire and throwing his arms along the back of the sofa. Harry felt his hand brush against the back of his head.

"Don't take offence, but you look odd with two green eyes."

Harry looked up from his book. "Do I?"

"I got used to you wearing that crazy blue one. It's weird seeing you without it."

Harry just smiled and shrugged. He didn't say anything when the hand that landed behind his head started idly playing with his hair.

"They're talking about us, aren't they?"

"Who?"

Harry nodded his head towards a small group off to the far side of the common room who kept glancing their way. Draco looked over, examining the group. Pansy Parkinson was among them, with a couple of sixth and seventh years, and one beady-eyed second year. All of them, Harry knew, had Death Eater relatives in prison, either their parents or extended family.

"Probably," Draco said, looking away. "Does it bother you?"

"I'm getting used to people talking about me. Don't like it, but I'm getting used to it." He watched them with his magical eye while pretending to read more of his book. "Do they disapprove of you being friends with me?"

Draco raised an eyebrow at him and Harry clarified, "I just mean, y'know, with me being the Boy Who Lived and you…"

"Being son of one of the Dark Lord's favourite Death Eaters?"

Harry shrugged and fixed his gaze on the book, not answering.

"They think it's a phase. The imprisonment of my father and the knowledge of what he did has left me a confused young man who gravitates towards the child of the man my father wronged in a vain attempt to understand what he did and find peace with my now fatherless existence. However, given time, my attraction to you will surely fade, at which point I will rejoin the ranks of Slytherin's most elite and bring with me some inside information on you."

Harry stared at him. Draco smiled. His fingers were still playing with Harry's hair. "Yes," he said, "they disapprove, but for now they'll do nothing. Regardless, it's none of their concern and I, for one, will not be bothered by the lack of approval from people several rungs below me on the social ladder. My father might be in jail but so are their parents, and I'm still the richest and, more importantly, most handsome person in the house."

"Some people might argue with that," Harry said, lips quirking.

 _Must we do this again? I'm starting to think you actually fancy the boy._

"Do you?"

Harry shrugged. "Tyler's good looking."

"He's pretty, not handsome."

"Still good looking."

"But not more so than me."

"It's a tough pick."

"It is not. I'm clearly the obvious choice."

Harry just chuckled.

 _You don't even deny it! I swear to Merlin, if your little crush interferes with studying and other equally important things I'll sing annoying Christmas songs to keep you awake at nights._

* * *

Umbridge was almost universally disliked within the school. No one appreciated her theory only lessons, especially not the fifth and seventh years. People complained enough that eventually Dumbledore ordered her to let them practice magic, but that didn't make her any better a teacher.

Harry heard a rumour that she even tortured students in detention and that Amelia Bones herself came to the school to investigate, but he wasn't sure if that was true. He certainly wasn't going to get himself a detention with her just to find out.

On the last Saturday of the month, Harry had his check up appointment with Kirith, but it wasn't until the afternoon. That morning, he got a message from Hermione by owl post that read simply, _Meet us this morning at the place where you learnt to swim._ It was unsigned, but he recognised the handwriting. Curious at this secrecy, he finished his breakfast, excused himself from Cid and Tyler, and headed up to the seventh floor.

A door was already in place at the Room of Requirement and he entered to find a large room lined on two sides with bookcases, all the books on them focused on defensive magic, and a table at the end filled with objects for sensing dark magic and enemies. Hermione and Neville were both inside, Hermione reading on some pillows by a bookcase and Neville examining the objects on the table.

"What's this about?" Harry asked, dropping onto a cushion beside Hermione. She put her book aside and Neville came over to join them. Harry looked between them, suddenly suspicious. "Why do I think I'm not going to like what you have to say?"

 _Oh, look at you being a clever little boy._

"We had an idea," Hermione began.

"Hermione did, really," Neville said, not in the manner of trying to give credit where it's due, but rather wanting Harry to know who was really behind this.

"Oh, alright, _I_ had an idea that, well… we're not getting a proper Defence education from Umbridge."

Harry snorted. "You can say that again."

"And I was thinking we need to do something about it, because I for one do not want to fail my O.W.L.s, nor do I want to be left defenceless if…" she swallowed thickly, "… if Death Eaters or Voldemort ever attacked."

"So what were you thinking?" Harry asked.

"I thought, maybe, we need a better teacher. A proper teacher."

"Good luck with that. Sirius told me Umbridge is Ministry appointed; Amelia Bones appointed her and we're stuck with her for a whole year."

Neville and Hermione exchanged glances.

"You're not talking about a replacement," Harry realised. "You're thinking of extracurricular Defence lessons. From who?"

"Well… you."

 _That's a terrible idea,_ the voice said, and Harry echoed the sentiment.

"But you're incredible at Defence—you're incredible at everything," Neville said.

"My power doesn't make me a good teacher. In fact it makes me completely unsuited to being a teacher."

"Why? You know how to do everything we need to learn and we're not getting it from Umbridge, so why not you?"

A butterfly appeared, fluttering in the air between the three of them. "That's why. I'm not suited to teaching people when my magic is nothing like anyone else's."

"But you can still do loads of spells," Hermione persisted as the butterfly vanished. "Moody taught you loads of stuff for the first task last year, didn't he? And you looked up plenty of jinxes and hexes for the third task?"

"Yeah, but that's not—you guys don't get it. Look." He grabbed the book Hermione was reading, _Jinxes for the Jinxed_ , and held it out. "Pick a spell from that, one that's got specific wand movements, and tell me the incantation only and whether I should cast it on something, someone, or just randomly."

Hermione glanced at Neville, who shrugged, and did as he asked, flipping the book open to a random page. " _Duro_. Cast it on an object."

Harry drew his wand, turned it on the bookshelf nearest, and repeated the incantation. The bookshelf turned to stone, making Neville jump. Horrified, Harry hurriedly turned it back and grabbed one of the books to check it hadn't been damaged, but it was fine. Only then did he turn to Hermione and say, "Is that what it's supposed to do?"

She nodded.

"But with proper wand movements?"

"An angled up-down flick, and the pronunciation should be harder."

"Right, and watch this." He pointed his wand at the bookshelf again, moved his wand in a perfect swish-and-flick, and said clearly, " _Wingardium Leviosa!_ " and the bookshelf turned to stone once more, earning startled noises from his friend.

"This is what I mean," Harry said after turning the bookshelf back to normal. "I can do things with half-arsed spell casting and I can do perfect spells and get different results if I want. I can't teach people to do spells properly when I hardly do them properly myself. If you guys taught it, I'm perfectly willing to help out and back you up, but I can't be the one to do it."

 _Good little spell though,_ the voice remarked later when he was walking back to Slytherin. _I wonder what would happen if you used it on a living thing._

"Probably kill them," Harry muttered.

 _You say that like it's a bad thing._

"Of course it's a bad thing."

 _Is it? It'd be no great loss if Umbridge died. Nor your daddy, for that matter… no arguments?_

Harry scowled. "I'm not killing anyone."

"Eep!"

He spun and a first year Ravenclaw stared at him, expression fearful.

 _Oops._

"I didn't—" he began, but they whirled and ran off before he could explain. "Great," he muttered, turning and carrying on his way. "Just what I need."

 _You shouldn't talk to yourself. People might think you're crazy._

"Shut up," he snarled as it laughed at him.

After lunch he went to the Hospital Wing, and then took the floo to Saint Mungo's. Once he was through the usual MEEG and general check up, Kirith inspected his seizure diary.

"You've been having quite a lot of convulsive seizures recently."

"I guess. It's been a stressful few months."

"Hmm, that it has. I'm going to up the dose on your potion though and see if that helps at all, and you should see about trying to reduce your stress levels. Are you still averse to seeing a psychiatrist?"

"Yes."

"Alright, but like I said, try and find some way to reduce your stress. Perhaps try meditating or finding a similar relaxing activity."

Harry nodded, then asked, "Do you think—I know it's not really your area—but I still have a lot of magical outbursts. Do you think meditation will help with that?"

"Possibly," Kirith said slowly. "As you said, it's not my area, but magical outbursts are related to stress and emotional trouble, so meditating to relieve those issues will certainly help reduce outbursts."

When he got back to school it occurred to him that the Draught of Peace would help his stress, but realised he probably shouldn't take it all the time. He did start taking it before his Defence lessons though. Even with a good book charmed to look like _Defensive Magical Theory_ Harry found them tedious. The bored sighs and mutters from his classmates were distracting enough that even the voice, normally silent when he was reading, spent entire lessons muttering violent suggestions on how to shut up his classmates or deal with Umbridge. The Draught let him focus for the length of the lesson, but the voice wasn't happy.

 _I don't like it,_ it told him. _It dulls me. I'd really rather you just dealt with your issues._

"Does that include you?" he asked spitefully, then downed a mouthful before it could respond.

He read up on meditating techniques and started doing it before bed each night, letting his mind clear of thoughts about homework, classes, Voldemort, and anything else that bothered him. He knew it'd take more than a few nights to really reduce his stress levels, but he noticed immediately that it made falling asleep a lot easier.

* * *

After Harry's refusal, Hermione and Neville must have reconsidered their options, because by the middle of October posters went up about new after-school club called the Defence Association. A completely student-run organisation, it was intended to be a community effort at teaching each other defensive magic.

Umbridge was not happy. Harry heard she tried to appeal to Minister Bones about it, and half the school heard her complaining to Professor Dumbledore one afternoon as he picked flowers in the west garden, but there was nothing wrong with Hermione and Neville's plan. It wasn't against the school rules to create a club, even one based on already existing classes; Professor Flitwick actually oversaw the Charms club.

Harry went to the first meeting out of curiosity, and had to suppress a laugh at Hermione and Neville's frightened faces as they saw just how popular the idea was. Clearly they hadn't expected quite so many people to turn up.

Because of it, most of that first meeting was spent organising things. Eventually a schedule was reached for two different weekly meetings: one was for general defence tutoring, which anybody could attend, and one was for fifth and seventh years only that focused on exam preparation.

Harry got roped into helping out despite his initial reservations. The rest of the students might not know exactly how skilled his was, but they'd seen him get through the Triwizard Tournament and his fellow fourth years suddenly decided to get boastful about his skills in classes, so he was begged to help out until he gave in.

It wasn't so bad really. He had to study spells carefully to make sure he was teaching them right, but he found he kind of enjoyed teaching the other fourth years and the younger students how to spell cast.

He wasn't studying Defence when Draco came up to him in the library the afternoon before the first Hogsmeade weekend. Draco didn't sit or say anything, just stood and peered over Harry's shoulder. Harry put up with it for two minutes before it finally bothered him.

"Can I help you with something?"

"Yes, actually. Why are you studying runes that I'm pretty sure even the seventh years aren't working on?"

"I have broad interests," he answered without looking up from the runes he was copying.

"Clearly. You realise you're taking up an entire table?"

"There are others. Go sit somewhere else."

Draco pulled out a chair and sat down. Harry didn't even glance at him. Draco picked up one of the books, turning a few pages and frowning.

"Seriously, Evans, this is way beyond the Hogwarts curriculum. What are you even looking at Enochian sigils for anyway? No one uses this stuff."

"Personal project, and no one uses any of this stuff; that's why it's called _Ancient_ Runes. Give me that, will you?"

He was learning everything he could about magic suppression runes. It was runes that left him so powerless in February, runes that almost killed him twice now; he wanted to know exactly how and if there was any way to counteract them.

He learnt that they could be employed in different ways—as with Dumbledore's cuffs, they could be encircled around the wrists, restricting how much magic could leave a person's body; or, as in February, they could be etched between two concentric circles to prevent anyone within the circles from using magic entirely, though not prevent magic entering from outside; or they could be spread out and combined with other runes, like on the Assistant's cloak, to suppress the magic of anything on the area of the surface covered with runes.

He hadn't yet discovered anything that would directly counteract the suppression runes, but a lot of runic magic was NEWT level, learning not only how to read them but how to string runes together properly so they actually worked as a spell. He was beginning to get an idea of it and was sure he'd figure it out eventually.

He also discovered references to demon repelling runes and sigils, and that was something he couldn't resist researching further. He was studying them too now, hoping to find something that might protect him from Crowley and the hellhounds when his ten years were up, even if he didn't manage to find a way to break the deal. All the extra studying also had the added bonus of making Ancient Runes his second best subject after History of Magic.

Draco handed the book over, watching him look between it and another then scribble something in his notes.

"What are you doing over Christmas?" Draco asked.

"Not sure. Why?"

"I just think you'd love the library at the Manor. It's not as big as this, but we've got books Hogwarts would never stock."

Harry said nothing for a while, continuing to write notes from the Enochian text before moving it aside to look at a book filled with Egyptian symbols. "I don't think that'd be exactly a good idea. I doubt your mother wants me in your house."

There was a tense pause. Harry still didn't look up.

"She didn't know—"

"I know, you told me, and I believe it. But I'm still… I'd be an uncomfortable reminder of what your father did."

"Is this really about my mother or is it about you? I get it if you're uncomfortable being there, but you can just say it instead of trying—"

"Draco," Harry interrupted, looking up for the first time, a slightly exasperated smile on his face, "I spent a night in your bed. You think—"

There was a thud of someone dropping something heavy behind the bookshelf to Harry's right, followed by a loud curse, and then Madam Pince's disapproving voice.

"Really, Professor Snape, there are _children_ about."

Harry stared at his notes, his face turning red. Draco cleared his throat. Both of them pretended not to notice Snape as he stalked out from behind the stacks and towards the entrance. There was a minute of silence after he left, then Draco said, "So. Our Head of House now thinks we're sleeping together."

 _Ha! Never mind that—your_ _ **daddy**_ _thinks you're sleeping together!_

"He's not—"

He bit his tongue, hard enough to feel blood fill his mouth. Draco looked at him oddly.

"He's not what?"

"Nothing. It doesn't matter." He stood, closing books and gathering his notes then shoving them into his bag.

"You heading back to Slytherin?"

"No, I'm meeting Hermione and Neville before the DA club meeting."

Draco didn't insult them but his lip curled slightly. "I'll see you later then."

 _Correct me if I'm wrong,_ drawled the voice as Harry left the library, _but I do believe you're having feelings for him._

'He's my friend.'

 _But you want him to be more. You've been having some very interesting dreams about him._

He couldn't even deny it. He'd had his fair share of wet dreams, but lately they'd had a distinct theme of blond boys. He still wasn't sure that mean he actually fancied Draco, however; he only ever watched in his dreams, not getting involved himself. Surely if he fancied Draco then he'd dream of actually doing things with him?

* * *

As September had passed into October, and then as November approached, Harry found himself growing increasingly nervous. At first he couldn't figure out why because nothing was going on—Voldemort was still quiet and everything at school was going as well as he could hope for, even with Umbridge trying to begin a crusade against the teachers and curriculum—but then he realised that was exactly the problem. Last year had started out alright, too, and then taken a turn for the worse.

He was almost relieved when the night before Hallowe'en he started feeling ill while he did his homework, not unlike he had the night Voldemort escaped the Ministry. He couldn't concentrate even on his History of Magic essay and Arithmancy was out of the question, so he packed it up and headed to bed, hoping he'd feel better lying down, but he barely reached his dorm before he was struck by a pain his head so extreme it blacked out the entire room.

Maniacal laughter rang in his ears… he was happier than he'd ever been in his life… jubilant, ecstatic, triumphant… a wonderful, wonderful thing had happened…

The next thing he knew, he was in his bed, coming round from a seizure. Tyler was perched on the edge, flicking through a _Spiderman_ comic. He looked around when Harry shifted.

"Oh, hey. You alright?"

Harry grunted.

"You were blocking the door so Cid and I stuck you in bed. What was so funny anyway?"

"What?"

"Right before the seizure you were laughing like crazy."

"Was I? I dunno. I don't remember."

"Must have been hilarious, whatever it was. You feeling okay?"

"I'll live," Harry said. "Gonna sleep."

Tyler nodded and left him. Harry saw his wand next to his bed, grabbed it to close the curtains, then Wished himself into his pyjamas before turning over and falling straight to sleep.

The next morning, the _Daily Prophet_ reported the escape of twenty-three Death Eaters.

* * *

The Ministry were slightly baffled as to why, alongside Lord Voldemort's Death Eaters, the breakout included the drunk but ultimately unremarkable wizard who attempted to break into Amelia Bones' office several weeks ago. Indeed, the Aurors who arrested him considered him a fool and a joke; he did, after all, attempt to break in with nothing but a set of Muggle lockpicks. He was certainly nothing that anyone would have thought worthy of the attention of seasoned murderers.

But they were interested in the reports from the remaining prisoners who claimed that a blond haired man assisted in the break out, moving through the prison with a silver lioness at his side. Dumbledore had informed Amelia Bones about the Assistant, warning her of his power and the risk he presented as a servant of Voldemort.

Tonks delivered the news to Black Stag House, but James already knew. He'd known since it happened—his Master's relief at freedom echoed down their Bond, and James could feel him relaxing as he left the Dementors' presence.

His own relief was twice as strong, not only glad that his Master was no longer suffering, but knowing that it meant he'd soon be called on to see him again, something he eagerly awaited.

* * *

 _We could hunt them down. We could fin_ _d them, kill them all. We could attack Voldemort himself. Who cares what the Assistant said? He does not know our power; we can best whatever magic Voldemort has cast upon himself. You beat him when you were only a baby and wielding but a fraction of the power you have now. He cannot hope to survive us._

Harry ignored the voice; he'd already decided it wasn't his job and he wasn't changing that now just because the Death Eaters were out.

A fearful air settled in the school that day as word got around. With no real attacks from Voldemort, his threat had lessened in the months since his escape from the Ministry, especially for the children who had no memories of his last reign of terror. For many of them, he still seemed a distant monster under the bed, causing no fear in the daylight, especially when they had homework and Quidditch and daily teenage troubles to deal with.

But the escape of his Death Eaters made it more real, both in knowing he had the support of his followers and realising that, in breaking them out of Azkaban, he was just as powerful as their parents told them.

Harry thought about sending a message to Dumbledore saying he thought he'd seen the breakout, but as he couldn't be certain and, if he had, he couldn't remember it, he decided not to bother. He did go straight to the library after classes to read up on Occlumency. He'd forgotten about it in June, in the wake of learning about the prophecy, and hadn't asked Snape to teach him. He wasn't about to ask him now, but he figured he could read up on it and learn that way.

Except it soon became clear that this wasn't something he could learn alone. The books had theory, but said the only way to truly reach mastery was to test oneself against a mental intrusion. It had spells, but it wasn't something he could test on himself, and the warnings about amateurs using the spells on people were severe. A bad attempt at invading another person's mind could drive either or both parties mad.

He didn't want more visions of Voldemort, especially if they were going to cause seizures, but what was he meant to do? Snape wasn't an option, but how was he meant to find another teacher? Ask around? Put an ad in the _Daily Prophet_?

He spent so long reading that the Hallowe'en feast had started by the time he closed the books and set off. The library was almost entirely empty—he thought it was completely empty, until he happened to glance through a bookcase and saw Draco sat at a table. He had books and parchment spread out before him, but he had his chin in hand and was twirling his quill absently as he stared blankly at a bookcase.

Harry paused, then headed for the table. Draco looked up at the sound of his approach, setting his face into an unwelcoming expression that faltered when he saw Harry.

"Oh, it's you. What do you want?" he asked rudely.

 _Gone off you a bit, hasn't he?_

"Are you alright?" Harry asked.

Draco eyed him suspiciously. "Do you care?"

"I wouldn't ask if I didn't. I just… I know it must be difficult. Today. With your father…"

"Why are you even talking to me?"

"What?"

"My father locked yours in a cellar for your whole life, and he works for the man who keeps trying to kill you. That man raised me; I've called your friends Mudbloods; I acted like I thought the attack at the Quidditch World Cup was okay—I kind of _did_ think it was okay, except looking back I realise how fucked up that is. You don't like me and you never have, so why are you pretending to care what I feel now?"

… _He's got a point, you know._

Harry approached the table, dropped his bag on the floor, pulled out a chair and sat down. He scanned the library, double checking they were the only ones in it, and then said, "James Potter isn't my father."

Draco blinked. "What?"

Harry looked down at the table, running his finger over an old ink stain. "My mum had an affair, and I was the result. The thing is, my… the man that she… he knew about my uncle hitting me when I was a kid. He knew all about what was going on, but he never did anything about it. He just left me there."

"Why are you telling me this?" Draco asked quietly.

Harry looked up. "Because I don't hate you. I kind of like you. You've grown on me—" _Like mold._ "—and I need to believe that you're not your father so I can believe that I won't end up like mine."

"But I have done some pretty nasty things. The Mudblood comments…"

"Yeah," Harry agreed, "but I haven't heard you say it in months. People change and grow."

"And I've grown on you?"

Harry shrugged, but smiled. "A bit. Maybe."

Draco grinned. "A lot."

Harry sniffed, looking away. "Don't get full of yourself, Malfoy. This library's barely big enough to hold your head as it is."

Draco laughed, and Harry grinned, but it faded when Draco asked, "So who else knows about your father? That James Potter isn't him, I mean."

"Not many," Harry admitted. "Sirius and Remus, a couple of teachers, my healer."

"But not your friends?" Draco asked, frowning, and then when Harry shook his head, "How come you told me and not them?"

"You never told anyone who I was," Harry answered honestly. "You didn't try to use it against me, either. I told you in the summer, you've always had more faith in me than anyone else, even when you didn't like me. I guess… I trust you."

Draco stared at him. Harry flushed and looked away.

"Can I kiss you?"

Harry's gaze snapped back to him. "What?"

"Can I kiss you?"

"Um… why? I mean, I know you, um… I just… uh, why right now?"

"Because," Draco said with affectionate exasperation, "hearing you tell me that you trust me above all others is really hot. So can I?"

"Oh. Um…"

 _No,_ the voice said, but Harry was thinking of those dreams he'd been having, and said, "Yeah, okay."

Draco shifted his chair around, leant over, and kissed him, more firmly than when he'd done it in the summer, and Harry, expecting it this time, leant into it. Draco's hand cupped Harry's face, tilting his head slightly, then moved across his head, fingers combing through dark hair until his hand settled against the back of his skull.

Draco broke it, pulling away then leaning in to kiss him again, softer this time, briefly. Harry stared at him, hyper aware of the hand still tangled in his hair, and the warmth coming from Draco's body, and how he absolutely didn't want to move even a millimetre because the voice in his head was silent and he didn't want to risk making it speak and ruining the moment.

"There's a butterfly on your shoulder," Draco murmured.

"Is there?"

"Yes. It's blue."

"They usually are."

Draco drew back a little, raising an eyebrow. "Do you always get butterflies on your shoulders when you kiss people?"

"No. I mean, yes. Maybe. You're the only person I've ever kissed. I just meant, when I conjure butterflies they're nearly always blue."

"And you felt the need to conjure one now?"

"I didn't mean to. I do accidental magic a lot. I blow things up when I'm angry."

"And conjure butterflies when you're happy?"

"I like butterflies."

Draco opened his mouth to say something, then his eyes flickered and went wide, and he dropped his hand from Harry's hair. "It was you!"

"What was me?"

"At the World Cup when all those butterflies appeared in the Top Box!"

"Oh. Yes. It was."

"Then you can make them vanish?"

Harry turned his head slightly, dragging his gaze away from Draco's face to glance at the butterfly sat sedately on his right shoulder, and it vanished.

"I'm starting to think I hardly know you, Evans. How many more times are you going to surprise me?"

"Plenty, I'm sure."

"I hope you keep to that. I'll be dreadfully disappointed if you don't," Draco said, and kissed him again.


	25. Chapter 25

**Chapter 25**

By the time the Assistant realised he'd been drugged, it was too late. He was already halfway unconscious and with no time to find an antidote, especially as he couldn't be sure what he'd been drugged with.

When he came to, he was lying on the floor of Voldemort's meeting room with his wrists shackled, the metal etched with runes. Voldemort stood over him, with a tall blond man the Assistant recognised as Preston Yaxley, formerly head of the Magical Law Enforcement Squad until he was arrested in February. His arrest would have been a huge loss to Voldemort; he was one of the most highly placed Death Eaters in the Ministry.

Right now he was holding a small knife and a thin, leather-bound, very familiar book.

"Oh you son of a bitch," the Assistant swore. He attempted to get up, but Voldemort pointed his wand and one of the floorboards curled up and wrapped around the Assistant's neck, holding him down. "The fuck are you doing?"

"You'll speak to me with respect, Assistant."

"You're breaking our agreement," the Assistant snarled, grabbing at the wood around his throat and tugging forcibly. "You said you wouldn't transfer my Bond. I've done everything you asked."

"And yet I find I still don't trust you. Preston, are you ready?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Fuck you! Preston, you lay a hand on me and I'll rip your fucking bollocks off!"

Yaxley crouched by him and the Assistant swung a leg up and kicked him in the head. When his head came down, the Assistant slung his shacked wrists around his neck and pulled it tight. Yaxley choked, but then the chain snapped and the Assistant's hands jerked down and slammed against the floor, the boards curling up and over his arms. His ankles suffered the same, leaving him spreadeagled and unable to move.

It didn't stop him screaming, which he did loudly and violently, cursing them both until Voldemort charmed his teeth stuck together. Even then he grunted and screamed through his teeth, twitching beneath the restraints as he fought to escape them.

"Preston, get on with it," Voldemort ordered.

Yaxley dropped the hand that was rubbing at his throat and opened the book to a dog-eared page, laying it on the floor. He picked up the knife he dropped when the Assistant kicked him and used it to cut his palm, then cut the Assistant's. It wasn't easy; the floor restraints were around the Assistant's lower forearm so he could still twist his hand.

Not enough to stop Yaxley slicing him and grabbing his hand, squeezing their bloody palms together as he picked up the book with his other hand so he could recite a lengthy Latin incantation. On the final word, two ribbons of light sprung out from their joined hands, one a dark yellow, the other a bright silver but with a thin strip of black through it. The yellow coiled itself around the Assistant's forearm, the silver around Yaxley's, and they glowed brightly for a moment before fading away.

The Assistant finally stopped thrashing, falling limp and still. Yaxley stood and Voldemort waved his wand, letting the Assistant open his mouth again. He ran his tongue over his teeth.

"Have you quite finished acting like a child having a tantrum, Harry?"

"You've finished trying to steal me from my Master," the Assistant replied dully.

"You have a new Master now."

"Yes, I know. Quite why you'd pick him, I don't know. I'd have been better off with Andy or Cal."

"Preston is a powerful and intelligent wizard. He'll be a far more suitable Master than your last one. Preston?"

"Tell me your Trigger," Yaxley ordered the Assistant, who shut his eyes and smiled.

"I don't know it. My last Master never saw fit to inform me."

"How can you not know it? He must speak it to fully ensure your obedience."

"That he must, but he needn't let me know it, which you'd know if you'd done your research properly. It's called Shrouding. Chapter four."

The Trigger, that one word that could make him obey his Master's orders no matter what. It hurt him to disobey his orders, but he could resist if he really wanted to, unless that word was used. The worst thing was, he didn't know what it was and he never would. He heard it, but the subtle magic of Shrouding meant it could be a word as odd as supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and his mind, and anyone else's, would pay absolutely no attention to it, even if he was given an order as short as 'sit'. Even more unfortunately, the Assistant knew his Trigger was something relatively common and simple enough to be accidentally discovered.

The Assistant opened his eyes again, looking at Voldemort. "You might at least have Bound me to someone knowledgeable, my lord. I fear my life is compromised by having my soul in the hands of someone so uneducated."

"Then let that fear encourage you to obey him even without your Trigger."

"I have little choice but to obey him, as you well know." He wriggled his feet and fingers. "Might I be relieved of my chains now, given that you've put me in far more restrictive, albeit invisible, ones?"

"Preston," Voldemort said, and the Assistant flicked his gaze to him.

"You will obey every order the Dark Lord gives you," he said, and the Assistant had to suppress a groan, closing his eyes again as Yaxley continued. "You will not betray him. You will not fight him. You will speak to him with respect at all times. Is that clear?"

"Yes, _Master_ ," he muttered mockingly.

"You will speak to _me_ with respect. I ask you again, is that clear?"

A tremor ran through the Assistant and his hands clenched, but he couldn't fight it. "Yes, Master," he said sincerely.

* * *

 _You do realise there's a slight problem with your decision to have a relationship with Draco, don't you?_ the voice said later when Harry was lying in bed. It wasn't quite curfew yet and he wasn't sleepy, but he couldn't focus on his homework or anything else right then. _He'll be expecting more than just a few innocent kisses, like all the nasty things Cid likes to talk about and which you have absolutely no interest in doing with him. Even in your dreams you never do anything with him. You just watch. You might have enjoyed kissing him earlier, but you weren't aroused. You didn't want to do anything more than that and you still don't._

The door crashed open and Harry jumped, looking through his curtains to see Cid enter, stalk straight up to Harry's bed, and yank the curtains open with wide grin. Tyler followed him in more sedately, going over to his own bed and picking up his cat, Aurora.

"So you finally did it," Cid said.

"Did what?" Harry asked.

"Fucked Malfoy."

Harry sat up, gaping. "I did not—" he started loudly, then lowered his voice. "I did not fuck him!"

'And you can shut up,' he said to the voice, which was sniggering at him.

"What _did_ you do with him? Because Malfoy turned down Tyler claiming that you two were going out, and Ed Coleman told me he heard you two talking in the library a week ago and you claimed you'd slept in Malfoy's bed. So really, all the evidence suggests you're fucking him."

"That's wasn't—I never fucked him. We just shared a bed. It was the summer and—"

"Wait, you were at his _house_?" Tyler interrupted, and Aurora meowed in protest as he stopped scratching her ears. "This summer?"

"It was only one night."

"The Malfoy family really has gone to the dogs," Orion sneered from his own bed. The three of them looked at him. He leant back against the headboard and didn't look away from the paperback book held in one hand as he spoke. "They used to be a respectable family, now look at them: patriarch a fugitive, getting divorced, and the only heir sleeping with halfie boys. It's such a shame to see a family like that fall apart so easily."

He turned the page of his book, acting as though he hadn't spoken to them at all.

"Dare you to say that to his face," Cid said. Orion ignored him. "Yeah, I thought so. You know he's still a whole lot better than you, Devaux. People around here actually respect the Malfoy name, even with Mr Malfoy in prison. I don't see anyone gossiping about the Devaux family."

Orion shot him a filthy look. "My family is respectable enough that no one needs to gossip about them. When they discuss us, it's only to comment on how perfect we are. At least I have a family name people know. No one's heard of _yours_."

"They might not know Villiers, but they certainly know Swift."

"Irrelevant. You're not related to Dylan Swift by blood."

"Nope, but he has a daughter he loves more than life itself, and that daughter happens to think the sun shines out of her big brother's backside. All she'd have to do is smile sweetly at her daddy and he'd do anything for her, even name his step-child heir to the family fortune."

"So, you _are_ going out with him, right?" Tyler asked Harry, who'd prefer they keep arguing with Orion.

"Yeah, I guess."

"You guess? He turned me down and he never turns me down. It seems pretty serious to me."

Harry shrugged. "We kissed. Earlier, in the library."

"Seriously?" Cid sighed. "I know you're a nerd and all, but you couldn't have picked a more romantic spot than the library to make out?"

"It's not like I planned it! It just sort of happened. We were talking and then he said he wanted to kiss me and we did."

Tyler shrugged. "Sounds about right."

" 'Sounds about right'?" Cid said disbelievingly. "What happened to spontaneous kissing? Who the fuck asks permission?"

"Malfoy does. He asks before he does anything, or at least warns you first. It's kind of annoying when you just want him to get on with it, but he insists. I asked him about it once; he said his mother made a huge deal about consent issues and communication when she explained the birds and bees."

Cid sniggered. "He got that talk from his mum?"

"Apparently."

"Dad tried giving it to me, but I already knew about it all from these guys in the village. I'd listen in on them talk but they caught me once and told me all about it. Dad didn't even ask; he was just glad he didn't have to do it. What about you?" he said to Harry. "Who'd you get the talk from? Your godfather? I assume you got it before this summer."

Harry flushed and muttered, "No one. I read about it in books."

That was true enough for the basic biology of sex, but it wasn't how his education had begun. Living on the streets inevitably brought him into contact with prostitutes, male and female, and a few times he'd watched them work with a childish curiosity. It was probably why he'd developed a taste for voyeurism.

"You do know how to, right? To fuck a guy and stuff?" Cid said. "Because if not you might want to read up on it before you get much further with Malfoy."

 _Told you,_ singsonged the voice in his head.

* * *

"You avoiding me?"

"No."

 _Liar._

"So you're not hidden in the furthest corner of the library studying ridiculously ancient runes—again—because you're embarrassed by what happened yesterday?"

"No."

"And you're not refusing to look at me because you've changed your mind about wanting to go out with me but don't have the nerve to tell me so?"

Harry said nothing. Draco nodded.

"Evans, do you remember what I said in the summer, after the first time I kissed you?"

"You said lots of stuff."

"The bit about not being a pathetic Hufflepuff who'll cry and write bad poetry if you turn me down."

"Yes."

Draco sighed. He reached over and took the book from Harry's hands then grabbed his chin, lifting his head and staring at him until Harry reluctantly met his gaze. "Evans, I may not be a pathetic Hufflepuff but I do have my dignity and I'm not going to be messed about. I like you—a lot. I want to go out with you. If you don't want to, fine, but don't play with me. So I'm going to ask you one last time, and if you say no, it's fine, I accept it. But I want a straight answer: do you want to go out with me?"

"That isn't—"

"Yes or no, Evans."

"It's not that simple!"

Draco dropped his hand. "How is it not that simple? Either you like me or you don't. What's complicated about it?"

"Because I don't—I like you, I do, and I'm not embarrassed by yesterday, it's just I don't…"

"You don't what?"

Harry let out a frustrated sigh and got up, folding his arms over his chest as he turned away from Draco, moving to the window and looking down onto the grounds at a group of first years playing tag. He didn't say anything for a while, but Draco remained equally silent, apparently content to wait him out, and eventually Harry sighed again, leant his head against the glass, and muttered, "I don't want to have sex."

He had his magical eye on Draco, so he saw the surprise cross his face then the smile that followed and the quiet laughter. A sudden anger rushed through him and several shelves of books started rattling dangerously. Harry grit his teeth, breathing hard and forcing himself to calm down before he caused any damage.

"Is that really what this is about? Sex?"

"Don't mock me," he snarled.

"I'm not mocking you, Evans." He stood, moving around the table to come and stand on the other side of the window. Harry glared at the glass. "You realise there's more to relationships than sex, don't you?"

"I'm not stupid," he snapped.

"You're acting stupid. If you've got some other reason not to go out with me, I'd love to hear it, but not wanting sex isn't enough. You said you like me, so go out with me."

"Why? You're going to want sex and… blow jobs and… and all that other stuff, but I don't and I probably never will so you'll just end up hating me because I won't give you what you want, so we might as well just not go out and stay friends."

"You enjoyed yesterday, right? I mean, you were conjuring butterflies and you said that means you're happy, so you liked kissing me."

"Yeah, but… I mean, kissing is… it's not…"

"It's not sexual."

Harry nodded.

"Okay, so we keep things non-sexual."

Harry glanced at him then away again.

"I'm being serious, Evans. I'm willing to try a non-sexual relationship. Cuddling and innocent kisses only."

"And if that didn't work? If you want more?"

"Then I… will… figure it out. Don't look at me like that," he added when Harry glanced at him sceptically. "We like each other and we want to go out, we've established that. Surely the decision to ignore my sexual desire is mine, not yours?"

 _This boy really does have it bad for you, doesn't he? Willing to give up sex just like that… what on earth does he see in you, I wonder._

"I just don't want you to hate me."

"I won't. Not for this anyway. I'm going into this fully informed of the boundaries; it's not like you're leading me on with false expectations."

"You'll hate me for something else?"

"Well if you turn into a clingy, obsessive, controlling arsehole, yeah, I'm gong to have some issues with you."

Harry smiled at that.

"So, we're going out?" Draco said.

"One more condition."

Draco sighed. "You'd better be worth the effort, Evans. What is it?"

"Stop calling me Evans."

Draco blinked, surprised, clearly expecting something more than that, then a smile spread across his face. "What would you prefer?" he drawled, stepping closer and sliding his hand across Harry's hip. "Darling? Sweetie? My foxy little thing?"

"Shut up," Harry said, poking a finger into his side and grinning. "You can call me Harry."

"The rest of your friends call you Harry."

"Funnily enough I think that _might_ be because it's my name. Just possibly."

"How about pet? Dearie? Sweet cheeks? Cutie-"

Harry kissed him, breaking him off in mid-word. "Forget it. Just stick with Evans."

"Make up your mind."

"I'm not having you call me 'sweet cheeks' or any other ridiculous names. If you really object to using my name that much, I'd prefer Evans to 'dearie' or 'pet'. That makes me sound like your cat or something."

Draco chuckled. "I'm sure you'd make an adorable little cat," he said, and kissed him before Harry could object.

 _You two are disgusting,_ the voice sneered, but Harry ignored it because he honestly didn't care what it thought.

* * *

In the wake of the escape, most of the Death Eaters only spent a few days in the hospital base. Voldemort didn't want them there whole time, and they didn't all get along anyway so it would have been a recipe for disaster in any case. Some of them had gone to relatives who could hide them from the Ministry; others had private properties that the Ministry didn't know of; and the rest went to safe houses set up in preparation for them.

Only three people remained at the hospital: Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange, and Antonin Dolohov. Initially, Rodolphus Lestrange remained as well, but whatever love there was between him and Bellatrix was killed in Azkaban just as surely as Bellatrix's sanity, and after a loud and violent argument he went off to join his brother.

Bellatrix was much happier. So was Antonin, who now had the privilege (some might say misfortune) of sharing Bellatrix's bed on occasion. The Assistant felt bad for him; Antonin had a tragic love for Bellatrix and mistakenly seemed to think that sleeping together meant she'd one day return his feelings.

Yaxley was in one of the safe houses, a place he shared with Merrick Mulciber and Frederick Nott. They liked to pretend they didn't get along, but given a strong drink each and they were happy as clams in one another's presence. All three were sexual deviants of some degree and the only real difference between them was their preferences and how they went about subduing their victims.

With the Bond transferred, the Assistant moved in with them. The Bond was kept secret—Voldemort didn't want it getting out he needed magic to control his followers—so Mulciber and Nott just thought they were lovers. The full extent of the Assistant's powers wasn't commonly known, but his ability to shift his appearance got out and most people thought he was a metamorphmagus.

The lovers part wasn't entirely untrue, either, to the Assistant's displeasure. He loved sex, and sex with his Master had an intensity to it that he couldn't get with anyone else, but Yaxley's tastes ran young and the Assistant didn't enjoy pretending to do that, even if it was better than Yaxley finding a real teenager.

It didn't take long for Yaxley to reveal exactly what kind of Master he was. Just days after the transfer they were in the kitchen of the safe house when Yaxley claimed his coffee tasted like piss, prompting the Assistant to respond with, "I didn't know you drank piss often enough to know what it tastes like."

Yaxley slapped him, a sharp and unexpected open-handed hit. "I have told you to speak to me with respect."

The Assistant lifted a hand to rub his stinging cheek and looked at him balefully. "It was a joke, Preston."

Yaxley slapped him again. The Assistant hit him back, hard enough to split his lip and knock him back against the kitchen counters.

"Don't. Hit. Me."

Yaxley touched a finger to his lip then looked at the Assistant. "Don't ever strike me again, and don't you dare give me orders. I'm the Master in this relationship."

"I'm well aware of that. It doesn't give you the right to hit me."

Yaxley lashed out once more and the Assistant threw up an arm to block the blow then backed up a step, glaring at him angrily. When Yaxley went for his wand, the Assistant disarmed him with a flick of his fingers, snatching the wand out of the air.

Yaxley held out his hand. "Give me my wand."

"I am not your punching bag."

"Give me the wand!"

The Assistant didn't. His hand shook.

" _Give me the fucking wand!_ "

The Assistant's hand jerked then he lifted it and dropped the wand into Yaxley's own outstretched palm. Immediately Yaxley jerked it in a diagonal slash and the Assistant staggered, hands going to his chest, eyes going wide as he let out a weak gasp. He stumbled against the counters, face screwing up in pain as he attempted to breathe despite his ribcage shrinking and crushing against his lungs.

Yaxley watched him slide down to his knees, one hand clutching the sideboard while the other scratched at his chest like he could tear through his skin to grab his ribs and pull them back. He could easily have stopped the curse, but the Bond held him back, that persistent sensation that he had to submit to whatever his Master did to him.

"Never take my wand from me again. In fact, never use magic against me again, Harry." He crouched, grabbing the Assistant's chin and harshly jerking his head up to look at him. "I own you. I will do as I like to you and you will take it because that is what you're supposed to do."

Yaxley dropped his chin, rising and stepping back, and only then flicked his wand and murmured the counter curse. The Assistant gasped and collapsed to the floor completely, coughing weakly and drawing in harsh, ragged breaths to refill his now unrestricted lungs.

"You're mine. Don't ever forget it."

* * *

Perhaps in an effort to avoid the fear generated by the Azkaban breakout, Harry's new relationship became the talk of Hogwarts. To no surprise, the fact that he was dating the son of the man who kidnapped his 'father' was a subject for hot gossip. Half the school thought he was nuts and the rest thought he was being lured to the dark side.

"I heard Hannah Abbott and Morag McDougal talking about how they think you need saving," Hermione told him as they waited for people to turn up to the DA club one afternoon. "They're convinced you've been jinxed or that Malfoy's slipped you a potion or something."

"Seriously? That's ridiculous. Actually," he said thoughtfully, "the most ridiculous part of that is a Hufflepuff standing up for me."

The first Quidditch match of the season was the second Saturday of October and provided some distraction to the gossipers. It was Gryffindor versus Slytherin, as always, and the Gryffindor team was more than half made up of Weasleys since they took on Ginny as Seeker and Ron as Keeper. But Ron's skill was only middling and he didn't fare well when faced by the usual pre-game taunting.

He played abysmally in the match. Harry actually felt sorry him; he didn't like Ron, even after living with him for weeks in the summer, but he had to feel bad when the rest of the Slytherins started singing a taunting song.

Harry left then. He knew Draco had come up with the song and he had no interest in watching the ensuing disaster. He might be Draco's boyfriend, and he might believe Draco was growing as a person, but it didn't mean he'd be supportive of Draco's dumber ideas.

That besides, he had something he wanted to do and, when he saw Dumbledore wasn't at the match, he decided this was the best time to do it. He Wished people to pay no attention to him and slipped out the stands, flying quickly towards the castle once he reached the ground. Inside he headed up, passing a few students and teachers who weren't interested in Quidditch. The seventh floor around Dumbledore's office was empty, but the headmaster himself was in, Harry saw when he looked through with his magical eye.

He knocked on the gargoyle. It twisted its head up and said in a gravelly voice, "State your name and purpose."

"Harry Evans. I'd like to speak to the headmaster."

The gargoyle looked forward again, several seconds passed, and then it hopped aside. Harry stepped by and rode up the revolving staircase, finding the door at the top already open.

"Mr Evans," Dumbledore greeted, standing by Fawkes' perch and feeding the phoenix treats, eyes never leaving the bird. "What can I do for you today? I saw you leave the Quidditch pitch; is my eyesight worse than I thought and Slytherin is _not_ doing well in the match?"

"No, we're winning. Wiping the pitch with them, actually, and I'm not interested in watching a slaughter. I wanted to ask you something, professor."

"Of course." Dumbledore gave Fawkes the last of the treats, stroked his head, and moved to his desk. "Please, shut the door and take a seat. What can I help you with?"

Harry closed the door and moved forwards, but didn't sit. He didn't plan to stay long.

"In June, you mentioned Occlumency and said I could use it to block out the visions from Voldemort."

"Yes, I understand you never went to Professor Snape for those lessons."

"I need a different teacher."

Dumbledore sat, relaxing in his chair and smoothing down his beard before linking his fingers across his stomach, tilting his head back, and staring at the ceiling. "Might I ask what's prompted you to seek tutelage in this now?"

Harry debated lying, but didn't see any point in it. "I think I saw the Azkaban breakout."

Dumbledore had been idly twiddling his thumbs but they stopped at that. "You think?"

"I had a seizure the night it happened. Tyler said that I was laughing manically right before it happened. The last thing I remember doing before it was Arithmancy homework and there's nothing funny about that."

"Oh, I wouldn't say that, but I can understand where you're coming from," Dumbledore murmured. "I can see why you'd wish to avoid the visions when they put your health at risk; however, Professor Snape really is the only possible teacher. Occlumency is a rarely studied art. Only one other person within the Order is capable of it to the level that he is."

"Then I want them," Harry said.

"I'm afraid that won't be possible."

"Why not?"

Dumbledore lifted his head and, for the first time in months, met Harry's gaze. Harry felt a sudden and intense rush of hatred for the man, and one of the many objects on Dumbledore's rickety tables explodes. Harry jumped and Fawkes gave a startled squawk.

Dumbledore dropped his eyes to the desk. "That's why, Mr Evans. I'm the only other person who could teach you Occlumency, and having me inside your head would be an even worse idea than having your father."

Another object blew up.

"He's not my father."

"He is," Dumbledore said gently, "however much you might hate him, and as I say, he's your only option for an Occlumency teacher. If you wish to keep Lord Voldemort out of your head, you will have to accept your father in it."

* * *

"You skipped my match."

Harry opened his eyes to find Draco standing by his bed, holding the curtains open and frowning down at him.

"I saw the start of it."

"Why'd you leave?"

"You were obviously winning, I didn't care to watch Weasley's humiliation, and I had something to do."

"You realise that as my boyfriend you're supposed to support me in these kind of things?" Draco drawled.

"I do support you," Harry said, sitting up, "but it doesn't mean I'll force myself to sit through something I'm not interested in."

"But you _like_ Quidditch."

"Today wasn't really a Quidditch match so much as an attempt to see how much you could wind up the Gryffindors."

Draco was still frowning at him. He looked around when the door opened and Orion and Stuart came in, then climbed on the bad and sat opposite Harry, letting the curtains fall shut again.

"Are you angry at me for winding up Weasley? It's not like you like him."

"Of course not," Harry said. "I think it was dumb, but I'm not angry at you. Why would you think that?"

"You seem kind of pissed. What have you been doing all morning?"

Harry looked down at his lap, fiddling with the hem of his robes. "Nothing. It doesn't matter."

"Mattered enough to miss my game," Draco said, but with concern rather than admonishment.

Harry looked up, smiling faintly. "Draco, do you have any idea how narcissistic you are?"

"If I say yes, does that make me better or worse?" he answered, and Harry laughed.

"Probably worse. Is it lunchtime yet?"

"Near enough. Shall we go?"

Harry nodded, glad when Draco didn't push to know what he'd been doing all morning, especially as mostly what he'd been doing was thinking about Snape, arguing with the voice, and blowing things up.

The voice wanted him to stop taking the Draught of Peace, which meant at least reaching a level where he could stand to be in the same room as Snape without blowing things up. After thinking about it, he did decide that letting his hatred affect him so much was giving Snape a worth he didn't deserve. He shouldn't waste so much anger on a man he wanted nothing more to do with than absolutely necessary, but knowing that and putting it in practice were two different things.

At lunch, he let his magical eye swivel around to stare at Snape while he ate. His anger was definitely less than it used to be; as long as he didn't think about Snape abandoning him then he could keep his magic under control. The real question was whether he could do it for the length of a Potions lesson—or an Occlumency lesson.

 _Learn to,_ the voice ordered him. _Even if you can't control your emotions, you should at least control your magic._

Harry bit his lip, turning his gaze away from Snape as he finished eating and stood to go. He wasn't sure controlling his magic was really an option; if he hadn't done it by now, would he ever?

He left it for the rest of the weekend. On Wednesday, he pocketed his Draught of Peace, but didn't take it before Potions. He hung back as the rest of the class entered the dungeon, fingering the vial, and then approached the door. Snape glanced up as he started handing back their last homework assignment.

"Close the door and sit down, Mr Evans."

Harry moved slowly to his seat, watching Snape. His anger and hatred bubbled beneath his skin, but he forced himself to control it, reminded himself that Snape wasn't worth it. This man hadn't cared enough to look after Harry when he was young; why should Harry care enough to hate him now?

He made it. He had to keep reminding himself over the course of the lesson, and he had a couple of close incidents when Snape spoke to him and passed close by his desk, but otherwise the lesson passed without incident.

He still didn't approach him about Occlumency lessons. He wasn't sure he could manage that just yet.

 _You're just avoiding him,_ the voice said. _You might manage Potions lessons, but you still don't want to get close to him._

Harry couldn't even refute it, because he still hadn't approached Snape by the end of term.

Harry was supposed to be going home for the holiday, but a week before school broke up, Sirius wrote to ask if Harry could stay because James wasn't doing well. Since the Azkaban escape, he'd grown more and more antsy, with more bouts of anger and depression. Sirius didn't think Harry's presence would help.

He didn't really mind, except all his friends had gone home, as had many others. It wasn't quite as quiet as the Easter holiday the year the Chamber of Secrets opened, but the castle was still fairly empty. Slytherin only had five students staying, including Harry.

On New Year's, after much prodding from the voice, he plucked up his courage and went to see Snape. He found him in his private rooms and took a deep breath before knocking on the door. Through the stone, he saw Snape rise from his sofa with an irritable look and a silent grumble, probably thinking there was some problem in Slytherin, but irritation turned to surprise and then wariness when he saw Harry.

"Mr Evans. What are you doing here?"

Harry momentarily forget what he'd come to ask and instead blurted out, "Do you ever think of me as Mr Snape?"

Snape looked as startled by the question as Harry was, but he answered cautiously, "No. So long as I've known you, it's always been Evans."

"What about when I was a kid?"

"Then it was just Harry. I avoided thinking about the fact you had Potter's surname, but knew I had no right to associate my own with you."

It was about the most perfect answer Harry could have asked for. Part of him wanted to be mad that Snape never thought of him as his own, but he fully agreed that Snape also had no right to, yet that small, childish part of him that still desperately wanted a real parent delighted at knowing that Snape refused to acknowledge him as James' child even when Harry used his name.

"Is that all you came here to ask?"

Harry shook his head. Reminding himself to be respectful given that he was asking a favour, he said, "I was wondering if you'd teach me Occlumency. Please."

Snape didn't look surprised at the request. He leant out the room far enough to peer up and down the corridor then looked down at Harry. "Are you aware of what that would involve?"

"Yes."

"And you're willing to have me inside your head?"

"Yes," Harry said again, if more grudgingly.

"You realise the lessons would be better done without the Draught of Peace. It would interfere with your ability to properly block your mind."

"I stopped taking it in November, anyway."

"Very well. Do you wish to begin immediately? Then I will meet you in my office in ten minutes," he said when Harry nodded.

 _That wasn't so hard now, was it?_ the voice said as Harry turned away and Snape's door closed.

"Oh, shut up."

He went straight to Snape's office and spent the next ten minutes throwing a rubber ball against the wall. When Snape turned up, he came from the opposite direction to his rooms and was carrying Dumbledore's Pensive. In the office, he set it on the desk and started removing memories to store inside it. Harry was tempted to ask what he was putting inside, but he didn't want to sound too interested in Snape's personal life, and he was a little afraid of the answer.

When Snape was done, he moved the Pensieve to one of the high shelves then turned to Harry. "I will attempt to break into your mind. You will resist me. You may disarm me or defend yourself in any other way you can think of, provided it is neither illegal nor causes me permanent harm. I would greatly appreciate it if you refrained from throwing me around as you have in the past."

"Yes, sir."

"Very well. Brace yourself… _Legilimency!_ "

He could feel it, this presence inside his head, and half-forgotten memories from his childhood began to draw forwards, but before they could he Wished simply Out and the presence vanished.

Harry blinked, mind coming back to the office. Snape was looking at him consideringly.

"Was that you Wishing, or was it the voice in your head telling me to get out?"

Harry's breath hitched and Snape nodded.

"The voice."

"Have you told anyone about it?" Harry demanded.

Snape scowled. "Watch your tone. But no; if I tell anyone, it'll be Healer Karpel. You should tell her yourself, or someone."

"I don't need help. Are we done?"

"No. That might have been the voice yelling at me, but you were Wishing, weren't you? If you're to learn this properly, you need it do it without Wishing. Reject me with your mind, not with your magic. Let's try again… _Legilimency!_ "

But Harry didn't throw him out this time. He didn't even try. When Snape first delved in, he drew out the very first memory Harry had, of falling down the stairs at Privet Drive and bouncing off the safety gate at the bottom, unharmed. It was the first time he did accidental magic, and it was after that he was banished to the cupboard under the stairs for a bedroom.

When other memories started flowing, he let them: Vernon hitting him, being sat in the cupboard under the stairs for days on end, being forced to do chores way beyond what a six year old should have to do, more hitting, listening to his uncle shouting abuse at him for being an unlovable, worthless freak.

When he felt Snape start to draw out, he pulled him back in with a snarl. " _No._ "

He heard a sharp intake of breath from Snape but he was focused on his mind, on the memories, and thought of the day Vernon put him in the hospital. He didn't remember it all that clearly, but he remembered enough to throw at Snape, and he remembered the time in hospital afterwards, half blind, arm in a cast, stitches in his stomach from where they operated to fix the internal bleeding.

Snape staggered. Harry blinked and shook his head slightly, now trying not to think of things he spent years ignoring.

"I'm sorry."

Snape's voice was quiet. He leant against the back wall, hands braced against the bricks, and he stared at Harry with undisguised guilt. It was the most open expression Harry had ever seen on him. "I realise it's worth little, but I am sorry."

Harry, to his surprise, felt only a flicker of anger at Snape's apology.

"I'm over it," he said. "I realised that I was wasting a whole lot of energy hating you, but you're just not worth it. You didn't care about me; why should I care about you? So I've moved on. You're nothing more to me than just another teacher."

He thought something like hurt flashed across Snape's face at that. He didn't care.

* * *

When Remus found James sitting in his room, sobbing like a child while blood dripped down his chest, James didn't tell him why he'd cut himself. Remus didn't push it, just healed the wounds, vanished the knife, and held James until he stopped crying, agreeing not to call for Sam the psychiatrist when James begged him not to.

He'd just been so mad. Months had passed since the Azkaban breakout and his Master still hadn't come for him. The longer it went, the worse James felt. It was like a growing itch under his skin that no amount of scratching could make go away. He was restless, too, constantly tapping and fiddling and battling an urge to pace.

Cutting himself was an effort to scratch that itch, and when it hadn't worked he'd cut through the words etched into his collar, putting a strike through _Property of Lucius Malfoy_ in a desperate fit of anger.

He'd instantly felt so utterly awful that he'd just slashed himself with abandon. His Master was going to be furious with him when he finally came for James; he didn't think even the self-punishment would appease his anger, as it shouldn't. There was no excuse for spoiling his Master's mark.

Then there was Sirius and Remus. His friends. He wasn't supposed to think that, but in the months he'd been with them he remembered loving them and he remembered being willing to die for them. His Master had beaten him into thinking he shouldn't believe that, but the longer he spent with them, the more he got to know them as adults, to see the men they'd become instead of the boys he'd been taught to hate, the more he liked them again.

He hated himself for liking them, knowing he was going against his Master's orders, and yet he couldn't stop himself. Sam said that, as a grown man, he could like whoever he damn well pleased and part of him was beginning to think she might be right. That terrified him, because she also said his Master had no right to treat him like he had and that James didn't have to believe the things he'd said. If she was right about one thing, it might mean she was right about the others, and he couldn't handle that.

It left him longing for the days when he'd been locked in his cellar; at least then things had been simple.

* * *

As always, Severus answered Voldemort's summons with a knot in his stomach. Voldemort claimed he didn't want to kill Harry anymore, but with the imprisoned Death Eaters free, they were well on their way to becoming an army again, and Severus feared that Voldemort's clemency would only last until he had his powerbase re-established.

He appeared on the outskirts of the hospital—it was impossible to Apparate directly into it—and walked in, entering through what used to be general admissions, taking the chance to settle himself as he headed for the meeting room. It was on the middle floor and he had to take the stairs; no one had ever bothered to repair the lifts.

He'd just stepped onto the stairs when something made him look up and he jerked aside as a green plastic ball the size of a football almost dropped onto his head. It halted just millimetres above where his head had been, hovering in mid-air. He stared at it. It was transparent and inside was a terrified looking rat with a silver paw.

"Sorry, Severus, didn't mean to almost hit you," a voice called down.

Severus looked up to see the Assistant looking over the railing of the floor above, grinning. There was a half-healed cut along his jaw and three of his fingers were bandaged; Severus never saw him without some kind of injury since the Azkaban breakout.

Severus suspected there was more between Yaxley and the Assistant than just a relationship, and Dumbledore agreed, but he hadn't been able to find out what. They'd both seen the Assistant's power; there had to be something that kept a man that skilled from fighting back against Yaxley's mistreatment of him.

"What are you doing with this anyway?" he asked, tapping the ball.

"Exercising Wormtail. All those months in Azkaban made him lazy and weak. Care to join me?"

"Delightful though I'm sure that is, I've been summoned."

"Kinda figured that. I meant afterwards. Or you can join me for some supper."

"Is Goyle back yet? Pettigrew's food is so abysmal it's safer testing my students' potions."

The Assistant laughed. "You know Pete there purposely ruins your food? He's actually almost as good a cook as Andy."

Severus looked into the plastic ball and drew his wand. "Does he now."

He tapped the ball and it began to spin rapidly.

"Anyway we got a house elf," the Assistant added, watching the ball spin faster and faster. "I told Bella about Sirius freeing Kreacher so she summoned him and bound him to her service, and now we get prime house elf food."

"Delightful, I'm sure," Snape said dryly, squirrelling that bit of information away to tell Dumbledore. How did the Assistant even know Black had freed his house elf from service? "But I have to return to the school once I'm done here."

"Pity. Maybe some other time."

Severus nodded an agreement and continued up the stairs with a smirk as Wormtail vomited inside the ball.

By the time he left the meeting room, he could feel the pallor in his own face and smirking was the last thing he felt like doing. The Assistant sat on the stairs leading up to the top floor and he rose when Severus came out, opening his mouth to speak. Severus didn't give him chance.

"He wants to see you," he said, hearing the coldness in his own voice. The Assistant didn't ask about it, and Severus stalked away, feeling a chill in his bones and desperately regretting his choices in life.

* * *

Harry came back to his dorm after classes on the last Friday of January to find a plain white box on his pillow. It was about six inches long, three inches wide, and three inches tall, encircled with black ribbon with a small card tucked under it. He pulled the card out and flipped it open to read, _For Harry Evans, to be opened in private._

 _Oh, God,_ the voice moaned unhappily. _He's leaving gifts on your pillow. That's sickening. Were I more than a voice in your head, I might actually vomit._

Harry frowned, climbing onto his bed and pulling the curtains shut. That wasn't Draco's handwriting. He tugged the ribbon away and wiggled the lid off the box, then felt his chest tighten. There was another card inside, this one black but with the Dark Mark etched on it in green. Dreading what might be underneath, he carefully picked it up, and then gave a surprised cry.

Laying in the box, stiff and very obviously dead, was a rat with a single silver paw.

 _Well at least it's not a vomit-inducing romantic gift._

He yanked the curtains open just enough to dig in his drawer for a two-way mirror that Sirius had sent him for Christmas, then jerked them shut again, Wishing for them not to open to anyone else and putting up Silencing Charms so no one would hear him.

"Sirius! Sirius Black! Sirius, please, it's urgent, I need to talk to you _now_."

The surface of the mirror rippled but instead of Sirius it was James' face looking out.

"Sirius is in the bathroom," he said. "He'll be out in just a sec. What's wrong?"

"I can't—I'm sorry, James, it needs to be Sirius."

James nodded. "It's fine. I understand. I just thought I was going mad for a minute, hearing voices. He's coming now. Sirius? Harry's on your two-way mirror."

The mirror blurred and Sirius face appeared then. "Everythi-"

"Sirius, it's Wormtail."

Sirius' face instantly turned serious. "What about him?"

"He's dead. I got—"

"Dead? How do you know?"

"I just got back from classes and there was this box on my bed and when I opened it, Wormtail's inside, as a rat."

"You're sure it's him?"

"It's got a silver paw and this card came with it." He picked up the card with the Dark Mark on, turning it over to face the mirror, and as he did he saw writing on the back.

"Shit," Sirius swore. "Harry—"

"There's a message on the back."

"What message?"

He read it straight from the card. It wasn't signed, but it didn't need to be.

 _I hope one day you'll replace the gap this leaves in my ranks. It's a position far more worthy of you than this rat._


	26. Chapter 26

**Chapter 26**

Severus was just leaving his office for dinner when he heard running steps. He turned to scold the student approaching and saw Harry round the far corner, clutching a box in both hands.

"Mr Evans—"

Harry skidded to a stop beside him, thrust the box into's Severus' hands, and said, "I'm gonna—" then collapsed.

Severus grabbed for him, dropping the box in the process, and cursed as he carefully lowered Harry to the floor, drawing his wand and conjuring a pillow that he slipped under Harry's head. He took a glance at his watch to keep an eye on how long the seizure lasted, and then turned his attention to the box. Something had fallen from it when he dropped it but it was only now he realised it was a dead rat.

Scowling, Severus pointed his wand at it only to pause as light glinted off its paw. Drawing a handkerchief, he picked it up, sucking in a sharp breath when he saw the silver paw. This wasn't what he'd expected when Voldemort told him he was intending to recruit Harry.

More footsteps had him hurriedly grabbing the box and putting the rat back inside just as a group of his fifth years turned into the corridor.

Draco stopped as they passed Snape and Harry. "You guys go on, I'll catch up."

Pansy didn't look pleased at Draco's words and shot a scowl at Harry, but she followed after Tracey and Blaise.

"You can go to dinner, sir," Draco said, crouching by Harry. "I can look after him now."

"That won't be necessary," Severus replied, a sharp bite to his voice. "He was about to tell me something when it happened. You needn't stay, Mr Malfoy."

"I want to though," he said, and reached for a bit of black card on the floor. He frowned at something written on it, then turned it over and gasped. Severus could see why even from his distance. He snatched it from him.

"That isn't yours."

"That was the Dark Mark," Draco said.

"It doesn't concern you," Severus said sharply.

As soon as Harry was fit enough, Severus had him on his feet and in his office, and ordered Draco to wait outside. He guided Harry into a chair and placed the box and card on the table, leaving the box open. Harry looked at them, confused for a minute, then straightened.

"It was on my bed when I got back from classes, on my pillow. I opened it and that card and rat was inside. I was taking it to Dumbledore." He swallowed thickly, then asked, "It's a trick… right? It's not real, is it? I mean, he can't… I'm the Boy Who Lived. He wants to kill me."

Instead of answering him, Severus returned the card to the box and replaced the lid. "Draco Malfoy is stood outside. When you seized, I dropped the card and he saw it before I noticed and picked it up."

"Shit."

Severus didn't admonish him. "You should be wary of how much you tell him and, though I hope to never have to say this again, you should consider wiping his memory of this. I don't know how much contact he has had with his father, if at all, or what Lucius might have told him if they are in contact, but the less he knows of this the better, no matter how close you might have grown lately."

"Draco can keep a secret."

"For how long? He may have kept your identity secret but circumstances are a great deal more different now. Do you expect him to keep your secrets when his father contacts him?"

"Yes," Harry said stubbornly.

"Then you're a fool. Whatever Draco might feel for you now will not trump his loyalty to his father. Lucius is still one of the Dark Lord's most favoured Death Eaters; your relationship with Draco—"

"My relationship with Draco is none of your business, _sir_ ," Harry said pointedly, getting to his feet and glaring.

"It will do you no good."

"You don't get to tell me what's good for me! Only parents do that!"

"I am your parent!"

Numerous jars decorating the shelves exploded, sending glass and wet, slimy things of indeterminate nature flying across the room, and Severus heard things smash even inside his personal store cupboard. A piece of glass hit Harry across the face, slicing his cheek, and several small shards were buried in the back of Severus' hand, which he used to cover his face.

"You're not," Harry said, quietly furious, even as a concerning hissing noise started to emit from the store cupboard. "Don't ever dare try and claim that you are."

* * *

"What was all that about?" Draco asked Harry once he was out of Snape's office. He hadn't offered to help clear up the mess he'd made and Snape hadn't asked. "I heard things breaking."

"Nothing. It doesn't matter."

The cut on his cheek was still bleeding and Draco drew his wand, tapping it to the wound and murmuring a spell, watching it seal up to leave behind only the blood that already escaped, and another spell siphoned that off, leaving his face clean and undamaged.

"You know healing spells?"

"Evans, please. My mother was a healer; of course I know basic healing spells." He pocketed his wand and lifted his hand to cup Harry's cheek. "You blew something up, didn't you? You were angry. Why?"

"He just said something I didn't like. It doesn't matter, Draco."

"You were injured. That matters."

"And you fixed me, so now it doesn't," he said gently, leaning forward to kiss him. Draco moaned softly, hand slipping around to cup the back of Harry's head, but then he made a small noise of protest and broke it.

"What about the card?"

Harry sighed, dropping his chin and turning his head away slightly. "That wasn't why I blew up the jars."

"Okay, but… was it serious? Was that really from the Dark Lord?"

"Yes, but it's not serious. It's just a trick or something, some way to make me walk up to him and let him kill me, as if I'm that stupid."

"It said something about a rat. What—"

"Don't, Draco. Please don't ask me about this. It needs to be one of those things we don't talk about, okay?"

"Alright," he said softly.

* * *

"There's a Hogsmeade weekend in a couple of weeks."

"I've heard."

"It's on Valentine's Day."

"I know."

"So you'll be going with me."

Harry tilted his head back, ignoring the retching noises the voice was making in protest to anything as sentimental as Valentine's Day. He was on a cushion on the floor of the Slytherin common room, a book in his lap while he leant against Draco's legs with Draco's fingers combing through his hair. His opinion on most things romance-related hadn't changed since they started going out, but he discovered he really liked having Draco play with hair. It was soothing.

"That's very insistent of you."

"You're not going with anyone else."

"I have other friends you know."

Draco's hands stopped and he leant forwards, looking down at Harry with bemusement. "Harry, you do realise that Valentine's Day is the day for lovers?"

"Lovers?" Harry squeaked, and Draco chuckled.

"Partners," he amended. "If you really don't want to, I suppose we don't have to, but don't you think your other friends are going to have romantic plans?"

"Tyler thinks Valentine's Day is crap and Cid still hasn't got a girlfriend," Harry pointed out. "Neither does Neville, and Hermione doesn't have a boyfriend. But, um… I guess we can do something. What were you thinking? What's romantic about Hogsmeade?"

Draco leant back, hands resuming their fingering through Harry's hair. "There's Madam Puddifoots, but I don't like the place anymore than I imagine you would. I'll think about it."

"Just nothing extravagant," Harry warned him.

* * *

In the Gryffindor common room, Neville fidgeted nervously, glancing around to check everyone else was busy with their own things and not paying any attention to the table he shared with Hermione. He took a deep breath.

"Hermione, I was wondering if… you wanted to maybe… gotoHogsmeadewithme? On Valentine's Day?"

"Of course," Hermione said without looking up from her Herbology homework. "We always go together, you don't have to ask."

"Right," Neville said, nodding. "But, um… I meant… _together_ together. On a… a date."

"Oh!" She looked up at him in surprise. "Oh, I… yes," she said, smiling. "I would love to go on a date with you, Neville."

* * *

Cid whooped as he entered the dorm a week before Valentine's Day, drawing looks from his roommates.

"Guess who's got a date next weekend? Moi!"

"With who? Your right hand?" Tyler mocked, but Cid just grinned.

"Tabitha."

Tyler scrambled up from his bed, staring at Cid. "No way. She thinks you're vulgar and crude. Jia told me so."

"Jia told you wrong. She agreed to go out with me on Valentine's Day."

* * *

Draco said nothing more about Valentine's Day before it came, so on Saturday morning Harry went to breakfast with Tyler, after they watched Cid give Tabitha an entire bouquet of roses in the common room. Tyler was still sceptical about Tabitha liking Cid, but she looked pleased with the roses and the two of them went up to the Great Hall together, Cid turning to shoot a triumphant grin at them.

Harry hadn't seen Draco, but a quick glance through the wall of their dorm, which neighboured the fifth years', showed him taking his time getting dressed after his shower. Figuring Draco would have said something if he wanted Harry to meet him before breakfast, Harry went to breakfast with Tyler.

As expected, he didn't have a date for the day; he was just planning to hang out with Alex Stone, as friends. Based on a few comments from Tyler since summer, Harry gathered that Alex was extremely wary of any new relationships, still not quite recovered from the abuse he suffered from Kirby Dawson.

Harry wandered back to Slytherin after breakfast while Tyler and Cid headed off to Hogsmeade. There was no sign of Draco in the common room or dorms, but ten minutes later he came sauntering into Harry's room carrying his Firebolt.

"Grab a cloak," he ordered. "We're going flying."

"What happened to Hogsmeade?"

"Everyone's going to Hogsmeade; I had a better idea. C'mon; cloak, grab."

"I'm not meant to—"

"Fly unsupervised, I know. But," he said, sauntering further into the room and leaning against the post of Harry's bed, "that would only apply when you're on a broom yourself. Today, you're flying with me on my broom." He paused, then added, "That's not a euphemism by the way."

 _Terrible one if it was,_ the voice muttered.

Harry expected to be sitting behind Draco on the broom, but Draco had him sit in front and wrapped his arms around him to clutch the broom handle.

"I'll have a harder time catching you if you're behind me," he pointed out. "Much safer to keep you in front of me."

Harry agreed with that, but he was also pleased to be sat in front. He liked being wrapped in Draco's arms and, as the smaller of the two, it was easily done and not awkward or uncomfortable once they were both settled in place.

They couldn't fly on the Quidditch pitch as the Gryffindor team had it booked for the day to practice, but Draco and Harry spent a little while hovering to watch them. Ron had quit after his disastrous first match and the new Keeper, although better than Ron, appeared to be trying to take over captaining duties as well. Angelina Johnson, the real captain, was very clearly annoyed.

"They've got no hope in their match against Hufflepuff," Draco said happily.

When it started raining, Draco suggested they head back inside but Harry was enjoying himself so they stayed out until lunch, by which time they were both soaked to the bone and shivering. Draco tried to pull him straight inside when they landed, but Harry stopped him before they reached the doors, pulling him close for a kiss.

"Evans, we're getting wet."

"We're already wet, Malfoy. A little more water won't hurt us."

"You can kiss me inside when we're dry."

"But I want to kiss you in the rain."

Draco rolled his eyes but obliged, wrapping his free arm around Harry's waist and pulling him in, their lips meeting as Harry wrapped both arms around Draco's neck and pressed their bodies close.

His day, Harry discovered later, went a lot better than Cid's. Tyler's doubts about Tabitha turned out to be correct. Their date was nothing more than an attempt to make Michael Jamison, from Ravenclaw, jealous and it worked. Jamison saw them kissing in Madam Puddifoots, a little tea shop off the main High Street, and promptly stormed in and hexed Cid. Tabitha decided this was a clear display of Jamison's undying love and left with him, uncaring of the fact that Cid was still covered in boils.

* * *

At the end of February, Harry found an envelope on his pillow. On the front were the words, _For Harry Evans, to be opened in private._ Inside were several newspaper clippings—but not from the _Daily Prophet_. All of them were from Muggle newspapers and contained stories of violence against children, abused kids like him and a few who had been killed by their guardians. There was another card with the Dark Mark on as well.

 _This is what I strive to eradicate, destroying monsters who would abuse and kill their children. You have suffered at the hands of Muggles who would call themselves your family; join me and you could have your revenge. You can show them the true power of magic and prove why wizardkind must take their rightful place as the rulers of this world._

 _It's not like he's completely wrong,_ the voice said thoughtfully as Harry took the envelope and its contents to Snape. _Wizards are better than Muggles. You admitted as much to the diary in your first year._

'I don't think they should be killed.'

 _Perhaps not all of them, but you can't honestly say you would not like Vernon Dursley to die. You should at least admit to yourself that while you may not approve of Voldemort's methods, neither do you disagree with his opinions._

'I don't hate them, I just don't really care about them. And he hates Muggleborns as well. He'd happily kill Hermione. He happily killed my mum. He tried to kill me. Whatever I think of Muggles, I'd never join him.'

Snape's jaw clenched when he looked through the envelope's contents and read the card, sat behind his desk.

"Is it genuine?" Harry asked. "Does he really want _me_ working for him?"

"You're an incredibly powerful young wizard. He respects that."

"He tried to kill me. More than once. Why has he suddenly changed his mind?"

Snape put the articles and card back in the envelope and put it in a drawer of his desk. "Because of the prophecy."

"But the prophecy said I'm the only one who can defeat him; why would that make him want to _not_ kill me?"

"As he says, the prophecy says you _can_ defeat him, not that you _will_. He claims to believe that as long as he leaves you alone, then you'll leave him, thus saving him from being destroyed by you."

 _He's not wrong,_ the voice said spitefully. _You have refused to go after him._

"I would take nothing he says at face value," Snape said. "The Dark Lord never does anything except for his own benefit, and as long as you continue to refuse him there'll come a day when he decides to go after you again. You're too big a threat to him for him to ignore you forever."

"Voldemort's an idiot if he think I'll ever work for him," Harry said bitterly, using anger to hide his twist of guilt at realising he was doing exactly what Voldemort wanted. "He killed my mother, he tried to kill me. If I wanted revenge on my uncle I wouldn't need _him_ to take it, and he can talk crap about Muggles all he likes, I'm not going to condone killing them. One of my best friends is Muggleborn. I'll never stand with people who hate her just because of her parents."

"And when it's her life he threatens as he asks for your loyalty? Will you continue to stand against him if he threatened your friends or your godfather and promised to let them live only if you joined him?"

"Are you trying to convince me to join him?" Harry asked angrily. "Sirius and the Assistant said you're a spy but maybe it's the Order you're spying on, not Voldemort, and this is another ploy of his to make me join him."

Snape stood, slamming his palms down on the desk and leaning forwards, staring harshly at Harry.

"I would rather die than see you with a Dark Mark on your arm," he snarled.

 _I do believe he actually means it. He might just care for you after all._

"Shut up," Harry snapped.

Snape's face twisted from angry to furious. He moved around the desk to grab Harry by the arm and shove him towards the door. "I have answered your queries. Get out."

Harry didn't tell him he wasn't talking to him, just jerked his arm from Snape's grip, turned himself invisible and stalked out the door.

* * *

 _So what do we think? Is your daddy a spy for the Order or for the Dark Lord? Much that you dislike him, I am leaning towards the Order. He might be a terrible daddy and teacher, but he's never shown any of the cruelty that one expects from Death Eaters. Mind you, neither did the Assistant and he must be working for the Dark Lord, too. No one else could be leaving these messages on your pillow. Of course, his loyalty is just as questionable. Perhaps it's you. The Assistant works for the Dark Lord but he makes exceptions for you; perhaps it's the same for your da-_

"He's not my fucking daddy!"

Everyone in the Defence classroom stared at him.

Umbridge broke the silence. "Detention, Mr Evans. I will not have foul language and outbursts in my classroom."

"What was that about?" Tyler muttered to Harry.

"Nothing."

"Nothing made you have an outburst? Come on. Whose not your daddy? Is there something about your parentage you're not telling me?"

"No. Just drop it."

Tyler turned back to his book, but his expression said the topic was far from over. Harry inhaled deeply and stared at his own book without seeing it. He closed his eyes, forcing himself to calm down and focus.

All of you forget what I said, he Wished silently. Believe you heard me say 'I'm fucking bored'. Forget that I said anything about my father.

He figured he could have made them forget about the detention, too, but he was grumpy enough to feel masochistic about it. Besides, he wanted to see if those old rumours about Umbridge torturing students were true.

They weren't, at least not in any traditional sense of the word. She had him writing lines, which was no worse than anyone else had ever done, but spending two hours in an office with her was torture enough. As was the office itself. Harry was always quite fond of cats, but the decorated plates of kittens around Umbridge's office were downright creepy, and the pink lace was enough to make him want to vomit.

At the end of it, he was almost out the door when she called his name. He turned but didn't go to her and she stood up from her chair and scurried over to him. She thrust out her hand.

"Let me inspect your bag."

Harry took a step back, clutching the straps of his messenger bag. "No."

"Mr Evans, I am a Hogwarts teacher and I have reason to believe that you're carrying an illegal substance in your bag. Let me search it."

"What? That's ridiculous. I'm not letting you search my bag."

"If you don't let me search it, we'll have to take this to the headmaster," she said, like that was a threat. Harry took another step back, putting him outside the office, and gestured down the hallway.

"Fine. I believe that's the quickest path to the headmaster's office."

Umbridge stepped out, looked down the corridor, then grabbed at Harry. She got her hands around his bag and yanked, then she was thrown back into her office, crashing into her desk with a _whump_ and dropping to the floor with a thump.

"Mr Evans!"

Harry looked around to see Professor Sinistra come hurrying down the hall. She skidded to a stop, gasped at the sight of Umbridge sprawled beneath her desk, and dropped her scrolls to hurry inside and help Umbridge to her feet.

"Oh, thank you, Aurora," Umbridge said, patting at her hair. Or perhaps her head.

 _Not that brain damage would do much to her,_ the voice muttered.

"Detention, Mr Evans," Professor Sinistra said in a harsher tone than Harry had ever heard her use. Working at night had given her a tendency to be soft spoken, like she was afraid of waking the stars they studied.

"No," Umbridge objected. "This calls for worse."

"Oh, yes, of course. Are you alright, Professor Umbridge? Do you need to see Madam Pomfrey?"

"No, thank you, Aurora, I'm perfectly fine." She certainly looked it, turning an unpleasantly sweet smile on Harry. "I always knew you were bad news, Evans, and this is proof. I'll have you gone for this."

"Gone?" Sinistra repeated, looking between Harry and Umbridge. "You don't mean expelled?"

"I most certainly do. Assault on a teacher—that's more than enough grounds for permanent suspension."

"It was an accident," Harry said. "You attacked me, my magic lashed out in self-defence."

"A likely story. You cursed me."

"I don't even have my wand out."

"Yes, I never saw it either," Sinistra said. "I'm sure Mr Evans didn't mean—"

"Oh yes he did," Umbridge interrupted, "and I'll have him out of this school by morning. Come on. We're going to the headmaster's office. You too, Aurora; you're a witness."

 _Hey, moron,_ the voice said as they set off, Umbridge leading with Harry and Sinistra following, _has it occurred to you that this is a set up and there might actually be illegal potions in your bag?_

Harry's step faltered, but he carried on. He resisted the urge to reach into his bag and check, and just Wished any potions inside it to his trunk. He'd check later to see if there were actually any there.

Umbridge sent a passing prefect to fetch Snape as they headed up to Dumbledore's office. The headmaster was surprised to see them at first, then politely curious as Umbridge explained what happened, but when his eyes flicked to Harry he seemed almost disappointed.

When Snape arrived, Dumbledore held up a hand to stop Umbridge explaining everything again.

"I would like to hear Mr Evans' side of the story."

"It's half as she said," Harry said. "I had a justly deserved detention, but at the end she accused me of having illegal potions in my bag. When I refused to let her search it, she grabbed at me. My magic lashed out and threw her away from me. I didn't mean to do it."

"Liar!" Umbridge cried.

"Headmaster?" Sinistra spoke up. "I never saw Evans draw his wand at any point, and it did appear as if Professor Umbridge was trying to grab him when I rounded the corner."

"He still assaulted a professor of this school!" Umbridge said, puffing herself up. She still didn't stand as tall as Harry, who straightened his own back to get that little bit of extra height over her. "That's a suspension-worthy offence. And there's the illegal potions, check his bag, he has them!"

"That's a serious accusation," Snape said. "What grounds do you have for making it?"

"I received an anonymous tip from another student."

Snape's eyebrow rose. "That's it? And you waited the length of a detention to make the accusation?"

Umbridge lifted her chin. "I found it among my other paperwork just as the detention was finishing."

"I'd like to see this 'tip'," Snape said.

"It's in my office. It really doesn't matter. Just search his bag."

Dumbledore looked to Harry. He must have heard from Snape about the Occlumency lesson, which had ended well, because he met Harry's gaze. Nothing blew up this time.

"Mr Evans, I trust you're innocent of these accusations, but would you mind if we search your bag to prove it?"

Harry had expected this, so he nodded and lifted the bag over his head, placing it on Dumbledore's desk, stepping back and folding his arms over his chest as Dumbledore opened it and began pulling things out. Umbridge's smug look faded as he removed books, scrolls of homework, Harry's pencil case, and a half-empty pack of Droobles Bubblegum.

"It appears you're innocent, Mr Evans," Dumbledore said. "Thank you, and I apologise for this invasion of privacy."

Umbridge scuttled forwards and looked into the empty bag, feeling inside, presumably for hidden pockets or something, and even turned it inside out. When she found nothing, she threw it down on the desk.

"He must have taken them out on the way here."

"He couldn't have," Sinistra said. "He was in my sight the whole time and he never reached into the bag."

"Well then," Dumbledore said, "we need only discuss punishment for accidentally attacking Professor Umbridge. I think—"

"Expelled!" Umbridge shrieked, making Harry and several portraits wince. "He cannot be seen to be getting away with attacking Hogwarts teachers. You can't protect him, Dumbledore. I'm personally writing to Minister Bones and the Chairman of the Board of Governors tonight!"

She stormed out. Professor Sinistra left too, and Dumbledore turned to Harry.

"I cannot guarantee you anything if Henry Athelstan agrees to a meeting to discuss this, Harry," he warned him. "My influence with the Board of Governors is minimal."

Slightly more concerned than he had been earlier, Harry nevertheless nodded. "Yes, sir."

"I will do my very best for you; I certainly have no desire to see you expelled. Before you return to Slytherin, however, I'd like to ask you about Professor Umbridge's accusation about these potions."

"I really didn't have any," Harry said.

"I believe you," Dumbledore assured him, "but why do you think she made the accusation?"

"I think she planted some. My bag was on the floor the whole time I was writing lines, and she moved between her desk and filing cabinet a few times. She'd have passed it and could have slipped something in it."

"Presumably you Wished them somewhere else?" Snape said.

"My trunk."

"Would you please bring them here," Dumbledore asked, clearing a space on his desk.

Harry Wished for all the potions in his trunk, and didn't realise his mistake until two boxes and a few stray vials landed on Dumbledore's desk. He caught one filled with pearlescent blue potion as it toppled over the edge.

"Sorry, didn't mean—that's my epilepsy," he explained, sending one of the boxes back. "That's—"

"Draught of Peace," Snape said, taking a test tube from the other box. "From last term. This will have gone off by now; I hope you haven't used it lately."

Harry shook his head and vanished them.

"And why do you have a vial of the antidote I had you brewing last month?"

Harry flushed and Wished away the vial in his hand.

"Are you expecting to need it?" Dumbledore asked.

"No," Harry said, but they were both looking at him expectantly, so he reluctantly muttered, "I just like the colour of it."

Dumbledore chuckled. "A perfectly valid reason to keep it. Now, that would leave these three as the ones you suspect Professor Umbridge placed in your bag."

Harry nodded, looking at the three small vials of candy red potion left on Dumbledore's desk. They looked quite appealing, but he knew enough about potions to know that meant they probably tasted like sewage.

Snape picked one up, wriggled the cork free, and sniffed it quickly. He went pale and for a moment Harry thought the fumes would make him faint, but he looked down at the cork in his hand, turning it over to show a crudely drawn crown etched into the underside, turning from acid green to black.

"Dumbledore—"

"I see, Severus."

"What's that mean?" Harry asked, looking between their concerned faces. He stepped back, covering his mouth and nose. "Is it bad? Have you just let out poisonous fumes or something?"

"No, nothing like that," Dumbledore said, and Harry lowered his hand. "That is the mark of a master potion brewer. Every master marks his or her potions to prove they made it, and enchant the mark in some way to indicate when it's been opened so a buyer knows it hasn't been tampered with."

"So? What is that potion? Do you know whose mark that is?"

Snape was the one to answer. "It's Spinaspectus Potion, a very powerful hallucinogenic. Possession for personal use earns you three years in Azkaban; this much would qualify for intent to sell, which warrants ten years; brewing it earns you twenty."

"So you probably don't know whose mark that is then."

"It's mine."

Snape pushed the cork back in, digging his nail into the top to mark it with a half crescent. "I brewed this for the Dark Lord months ago. I can't imagine how it ended up with Umbridge."

"That makes this rather more severe," Dumbledore said. "Harry, you should return to Slytherin, and please don't mention this to anyone."

Harry nodded and left. When he glanced back through the door before taking the revolving staircase down, he saw Snape slam a fist on the desk and Dumbledore fetching a bottle of mead.

The looks and murmurs that greeted Harry's entrance to Slytherin told him the story had already got around. He ignored them and headed straight to the dorms, where Cid and Tyler instantly pestered him.

"Everyone's saying you trashed Umbridge's office," Tyler said. "It true?"

"Not exactly. I attacked her."

"Awesome," Cid declared, grinning. "About time someone took that bitch down a notch. Maybe this is what gets rid of her."

"They're talking about expelling me."

Their amusement died.

"Not awesome," Tyler said, at the same moment Orion Devaux declared from across the room, "Well deserved."

"Fuck you, Devaux," Cid said. Orion merely looked smug.

"It's about time they got rid of some of the trash in this school."

Draco burst into the room then, stalking straight up to Harry and reaching for his hand.

"I was in the library. People are saying you've been expelled for assaulting Umbridge. Tell me it's not true."

"It's half true."

"Which half?"

"I got angry, my magic had an outburst, Umbridge got injured, and now she's writing to the Minister For Magic and the Chairman of the Board of Governors about the possibility of expelling me."

"They can't expel you for accidental magic."

"You should probably fuck tonight," Cid told them. "Might be your last chance."

Harry turned red and didn't look at anyone. Tyler rolled his eyes. Draco looked at Cid disdainfully.

"What we do tonight is none of your concern."

Cid shrugged. "Just saying."

* * *

Harry couldn't get to sleep that night. He tried to convince himself that he'd be fine, but alone in the dark of his own bed, he couldn't seem to find the confidence he'd had in Dumbledore's office that, even if he was expelled, he'd be alright. It didn't help that the voice was quite taken with the idea of leaving Hogwarts and devoting his entire time to finding a way out of the demon deal, something he hasn't yet been able to do. As extensive as the Hogwarts library was, it didn't have what he needed, even in the Restricted Section, and he was starting to think he'd have to look towards more obscure texts that dealt in seriously dark magic.

Eventually, without thinking about what he was doing, he crept out of his bed and snuck into the next dorm over, peeking through the curtains around the beds for Draco's and sneaking up to it, tapping Draco on the shoulder.

"Draco? Draco?"

Draco groaned, rolled over, and blinked up at Harry sleepily. "Evans? Wha' time is it?"

"About three. Can I sleep with you?"

By way of answer, Draco shuffled over and lifted the covers. Harry climbed into the bed, turned on his side to lie with his back to Draco's bare chest, and linked his fingers with Draco's when the other boy slung his arm over Harry. Draco was asleep again within moments, but Harry lay awake, just listening to him breathe for an hour before he finally drifted to sleep as well.

Draco shook him awake a few hours later. He was already washed and dressed, but he waited as Harry sluggishly shuffled back to his own dorm to get dressed. He didn't have time for a shower but he Wished himself clean. It wasn't the same but it'd do.

He'd barely sat down at breakfast when Hermione came rushing over from the Gryffindor table, completely ignoring the dirty looks she got from more than a few of the other Slytherins.

"Everyone's saying you've been expelled for trying to kill Umbridge. It's not true, is it?"

"No, it's not true. Yet."

"What's that supposed to mean? What happened?"

"My magic lashed out and accidentally attacked her last night and now she's trying to get me expelled. She's contacting the Board of Governors and Minister Bones."

"But they can't expel you for accidental magic!"

"I have thought of that, Hermione," he told her, yawning and rubbing tiredly at his eyes. He'd desperately like to go back to bed. "Dumbledore's doing what he can to help me. I'll be fine," he assured her even though he didn't really believe it himself, but she was worrying at her lip and looking ready to rush off to the library and start compiling a complete legal defence for him. "Dumbledore won't let them expel me."

"You don't believe that, do you?" Draco asked when Hermione left. Harry looked over the various breakfast food laid out on the table and found absolutely nothing that appealed to him. "You'll need a more positive attitude if there is a meeting with the Chairman of the Board of Governors," he said when Harry didn't respond. "People react to confidence, Evans."

Harry frowned, pouring himself some juice after deciding he really couldn't stomach food just then. "Surely that meeting won't involve me. It'd be the Chairman and Dumbledore and Umbridge."

"And Snape, your godfather, and yourself. They're not going to decide the future of your education without you."

"Why not? Adults always decide everything else without me."

"You have the right to defend yourself, Evans. They'll want to hear your opinion on the matter."

Harry snorted. "Yeah, I'm sure Umbridge is really eager for me to talk."

He was glad to have Potions that morning. Forcing himself to focus on brewing helped take his mind off his potential expulsion and with Snape hovering over them no one dared ask him about what happened, as more than a few people did at breakfast and in the hallways on the way to class. He had Ancient Runes afterwards which was almost as good at focusing his mind, but he's spent so much time studying runes lately he found translations noticeably less difficult than he used to, so it didn't keep his mind as distracted as he'd like.

His nerves calmed down enough by lunch that he managed to eat three-quarters of a sandwich, but then Snape came stalking down the Great Hall towards him and delivered news that made Harry think he might just vomit the sandwich back up again.

"The meeting with the Chairman is at half past four this afternoon. You're to go straight to the headmaster's office after your last class."

"It'll be fine," Tyler reassured him. "You'll get off."

Harry nodded but didn't speak.

He seized during Transfiguration and claimed he felt too bad afterwards to stay in class. McGonagall sent him to the Hospital Wing and said she'd send a note with Cid to Professor Sprout explaining why he wasn't in Herbology afterwards. He managed to have a short nap that didn't refresh him much, and then Madam Pomfrey shook him awake and told him it was time to head up to Dumbledore's office.

He felt like he had lead in his stomach as he trudged up four floors. Snape waited for him beside the stone gargoyle, arms folded over his chest and a slight frown on his face, but when he spoke his voice wasn't harsh.

"I have a Draught of Peace if you feel you need one."

Harry considered it, but shook his head. He should have a clear mind for what was about to happen, even if it meant listening to the voice trying to convince him to get himself thrown out.

Sirius and James were in the office with Dumbledore. They didn't say anything to Snape when he and Harry entered, but James flicked his gaze between them and Harry thought he was trying to see how similar they were in looks.

Sirius stood and pulled Harry into a hug. "We're going to sort this out, alright, kid?"

Harry nodded, feeling a little less nervous with Sirius there. It wasn't much, but it was something.

"Sit down and tell me what happened."

Harry did and when he finished, James said, "Sounds like this Umbridge woman hasn't got a leg to stand on, even if we can't prove she framed him with potions."

Harry getting rid of them meant that they couldn't even bring the potions up without generating questions that would just put more suspicion on him. The couldn't prove the potions had ever been in Umbridge's possession, and without that they had no way to discredit her. For now, only the assault mattered, but they still had to convince the Chairman that it had been unintentional.

"Why are you here?" Harry asked James. "I don't mind really, but I thought it'd be just Sirius."

"Remus was out,"

Snape sneered. "And you were too scared to be left alone?"

"Severus," Dumbledore scolded.

"When you've spent fourteen years locked in a dungeon, Snape, then you can comment on my mental state," James said coldly. "Until then, keep your big nose out of it."

"Gentlemen," Dumbledore said warningly, "this is not the time for your petty rivalry."

All three men looked like they wanted to object to his phrasing, but there was a knock at the door and when Harry turned his magical eye on it, the leaden feeling in his stomach got worse as he saw Umbridge with a man he assumed was the chairman.

Harry was only slightly put at ease by the Chairman's friendly demeanour. He introduced himself as Henry Athelstan and greeted each of them with a handshake before taking a seat. The tables holding all the various little instruments were moved aside, making space for a small circle of chairs and even Dumbledore came out from behind his desk to sit with them.

"Right," Mr Athelstan began, "I understand there was a bit of an incident last night. Mr Evans, why don't you begin? Don't be nervous, we're just having a chat, so let's start with why you were in detention…"


	27. Chapter 27

**A/N:** Quick reminder this was originally written several years ago, prior to the release of extra information by JKR on other magical schools, so some information in this chapter is decidedly fanon but established for the Hell'time universe.

 **Chapter 27**

The sound of his wand snapping seemed to echo through the room.

As soon as Umbridge and Mr Athelstan left, Snape pressed a vial into Harry's hand and lifted it to his mouth and Harry drank just because it was the only thing that made sense right then. He was never more grateful to have silence in his head.

Hermione, Neville, Cid, Tyler, Ginny, and Draco were waiting outside the headmaster's office when Harry left with Snape.

"He looks calm," Tyler muttered. "Why does he look calm when Umbridge looked smug?"

"Shock?" Ginny suggested.

Draco was the one to ask Harry, "What happened?"

"I've been expelled."

Hermione gasped and lifted both hands to her mouth. Cid swore and Snape pretended not to hear. Tyler and Ginny cursed Umbridge under their breath. Neville's expression was pitying. Draco just looked shocked.

"Why aren't you freaking out?" Tyler asked.

"Draught of Peace," Harry said simply.

At Snape's command, Hermione, Neville, Ginny, Cid, and Tyler headed down to the Great Hall for dinner, but Draco insisted on accompanying Harry all the way to Slytherin. The common room was empty when they arrived, for which Harry was grateful, and he headed for the dorms. Once there, he mechanically started collecting up his things and putting them away. Without a word, Draco helped.

"You don't have to do that."

"I have to do something," Draco said.

When it was done, Harry stood facing Draco and reached up to cup his cheek. "Sorry I'll miss your match on Saturday."

"You're going to appeal this, aren't you?"

"Not sure there's much point. The head of the board of governors made his decision."

"His decision can be changed."

"Maybe," Harry said, not wanting to get his hopes up. "You'll have to tell me what Umbridge turns out to be. Well," he said when Draco looked puzzled, "Quirrell was host to Voldemort's disembodied spirit, Lockhart was a coward, Remus a werewolf, and Moody a Death Eater in disguise, so you'll have to let me know what she turns out to be."

Draco smiled despite himself. "Speaking of Quirrell, everyone said it was Harry Potter who was involved in what happened to him. Was it?"

"Nope, it was Harry Evans," he replied with a grin that quickly faded. "We should probably break up."

It hurt him to say it. As hesitant as he was about the relationship in the beginning, he definitely didn't want it to end now. But he couldn't expect Draco to stay with him when Harry was on the other side of the island and they were hardly going to see each other ever again.

"I'm willing to try a long distance relationship."

Harry smiled sadly. "We're teenagers, Draco, it's not like we're supposed to last forever."

"But we're supposed to think we are."

"I was never one for idealism. It ends in disappointment too often."

"May I kiss you?"

"Yes."

It was long and deep and Harry thought they really should have kissed like this before, but Harry deemed it sexual (he shouldn't have because it really wasn't) and Draco didn't wanted to tempt himself into getting unnecessarily turned on. But neither of them thought of that now, just clung to each other, bodies pressed together, Draco's hands in Harry's hair and Harry's hands clutching Draco's robes.

"I don't want to go," he said when the kiss ended, leaving him slightly breathless and unwilling to let go of Draco at all. If not for the Draught of Peace, he thought he might be crying.

The door opened, making them jump apart.

"Evans, it—" Snape broke off after entering, scowled at the two boys' position, still close together, then finished, "It's time to go. Potter and Black are waiting for you in the Entrance Hall."

That made Draco look up in surprise. "James Potter?"

"Obviously."

Draco continued to look surprised for a moment, then schooled his expression. "Right. He's his father. Of course he'd be here."

"You don't have to come up with me," Harry said, reluctantly pulling away from him. "I never told them about us and you probably don't want to see James."

"I… don't know, but he probably won't want to see me."

Harry nodded. He bent to grab the end of his trunk with one hand, Wishing it to be lightweight as he lifted it, then looked at Draco again. "Well… bye, Draco."

Instead of echoing the sentiment, Draco gestured to Harry's left eye. "You should put the blue one in. Umbridge can't tell you not to wear it now."

Harry smiled. He could never be bothered to keep Wishing for how people viewed it, so for months now everyone thought he'd been wearing the green one. He lifted his free hand, covered his left eye, then lowered it again, removing the glamour.

"I've always had the blue one in."

He kissed Draco one last time, chastely, then turned away and dragged his trunk to the door, only to stop, drop the trunk and turn back to him. Snape gave an aggravated sigh and Draco frowned.

"Give me your hand," Harry told him. Draco did so, looking slightly bemused, and Harry turned it so it sat palm up then laid his own hand against it. Still holding Draco's steady with his left, he slowly lifted his right hand and Draco's face went from bemused to puzzled to wide-eyed amazement when Harry finally took his hand away, leaving an intrinsically detailed blue glass butterfly on his palm, as delicate as the real thing and fluttering its wings slightly.

"So you don't forget me."

"Evans, that's…"

"It's unbreakable, too."

Draco couldn't find a word to express what he thought of it and settled for saying quietly, "Thank you, Harry."

"See you, Draco."

Snape took him up to the Entrance Hall, where Sirius and James stood with Professor McGonagall. James stood restlessly, fingers tapping against his thigh, feet shifting like he wanted to flee for the door, eyes flicking nervously towards the small groups of students who were doing a terrible job of pretending not to stare at him and Sirius. Harry went over and dropped his trunk on the floor by them.

"Can I go say bye to my friends?"

"Of course," McGonagall said, patting him sympathetically on the shoulder.

When he entered the Great Hall, he expected pointing and whispers, just like always. He didn't expect half the hall to burst out in cheers and applause, interspersed with wolf whistles.

"Are they that happy to see the back of me?" Harry asked when Snape stepped in beside him, stopping to scowl at the students, arms folded over his chest.

"Actually," Snape said, soft enough that the cheering students couldn't hear, "I think they're applauding your assault on Umbridge."

Cid, Tyler, Hermione, Neville, and Ginny left their chairs and came rushing over to him. The Slytherins reached him first, but Hermione was the one to throw her arms around him in a hug. He felt another hand pat his back, and then someone else hugged him and Hermione, and the next thing he knew he was swamped in five pairs of arms.

"Dying!" he wheezed, and they drew back with laughs. He gulped in a breath when he was finally released, and looked around at them all. The cheers of the rest of the hall died down, people returning to their meals. "What was that for?"

"We'll miss you," Hermione said, looking as if she was refraining from hugging him again. "You'll write, won't you?"

"Of course. I don't have an owl, but I'll get them to you with a bit of wishing."

She smiled thinly at that. "Good. I'm not losing my first ever friend just because you've been expelled."

"Me either," he said with a fond smile, then looked to Neville. "Look after yourself. And Hermione. You know what she gets like. Don't let her overwork herself with those OWLs."

"Will do," he said, then ignored Harry's outstretched hand and gave him a hug, patting him on the back a couple of times before pulling back. "You look after yourself too. You haven't got Hogwarts' protections anymore."

"I'll be alright." He turned to Ginny then. He wasn't sure what to say to her, but she just held out a fist. He bumped his own against it and she smiled and turned away, returning to the Gryffindor table.

Harry turned to Tyler, who grabbed his face and planted a firm kiss on his lips.

"I've made it my mission to kiss everyone in our year," he said afterwards while Harry spluttered. "Seems this was my last chance so I thought I'd take it. Sorry."

"Wha- uh… it's, um… fine?"

"I'm not kissing you," Cid said, but he gave Harry a hug. "Keep in touch."

"I will. I'll miss you guys."

"It's time you left, Mr Evans," Snape said quietly, and Harry started. He'd forgotten the man was still standing there.

Sirius met him at the door, slinging an arm around his shoulder and pulling Harry against his side in a brief hug. "Come on, we're going down to the Three Broomsticks for dinner before we go home."

McGonagall escorted them down to the school gates. James looked a little more comfortable away from prying eyes. When they reached the gates, McGonagall turned to Harry and took a scroll of parchment from her pocket.

"Mr Evans, I never said anything to you because Professor Dumbledore always refused, but I've felt for a long time that you should have been in the year above. Your skill in practical magic aside, you've always proven yourself well studied in theory, something the other teachers tell me is true of their classes as well as mine."

"Thank you, professor," he said, sincere but a little confused. She held out the scroll.

"This is a list of the topics covered in all your fifth year classes. It is my belief that with perhaps a few months of focused studying, you would be ready to take your OWLs."

Harry took the scroll, still confused. "They snapped my wand. And I'm not a student."

McGonagall's face got the same expression she used in class when someone didn't know the answer to an easy question. "You were expelled for misbehaviour, Mr Evans, not illegal activity. Buy another one and contact the Ministry's Department of Education directly. I refuse to let Dolores Umbridge squash the potential of one of the finest young wizards I've ever met. You'll find that other wizarding schools would be perfectly willing—even eager—to accept you as a student. In my personal opinion, you would make a fine addition to any institute of learning and they would be lucky to have you."

He flushed, honestly touched by her words. "I'd have been glad to have you as a Head of House," he told her, but to his horror she looked as though she might cry. She didn't, thankfully, just sniffed, swallowed thickly, and nodded.

"Goodbye, Harry."

"Goodbye, professor."

* * *

They got a private booth at the back of the Three Broomsticks, and while they waited for their meals to be brought to them, Sirius slid a small vial of purple potion across the table.

"Snape said it'd be wearing off soon."

Harry didn't even hesitate to down it. He knew himself well enough to know that when he had to deal with his expulsion, it wasn't going to be pretty and the patrons of the Three Broomsticks—not to mention Madam Rosmerta, the owner—would hardly appreciate whatever destruction would be wrought by the inevitable magical outburst.

They spoke of inconsequential things as they ate. James and Sirius started reminiscing about their school days and trips to Hogsmeade and Harry listened, snorting pumpkin juice up his nose when they made him laugh. He managed to forget, for a while, that he'd been expelled and just enjoyed a nice meal with his godfather.

They took the Knight Bus home, much to Harry's displeasure, and arrived at the same time Remus Apparated into the front yard. His tired expression instantly turned sad when he saw Harry.

"I'm sorry," he said sympathetically, unlocking the front door and letting them all in.

Harry shrugged, dragging his trunk across the front hall to the stairs. "I'll manage."

"Draught of Peace," Sirius explained to Remus as Harry started dragging the trunk upstairs. "Harry, I want you back down here in five minutes, with a cloak."

"'Kay."

"So he's not actually felt it yet?" Remus said quietly. Sirius shook his head.

"I'm going to take him out to the forest to try and keep damage to a minimum."

"Isn't he a little old to be having magical outbursts?" James asked them. "Shouldn't it have settled down by now?"

"He's got a lot more power than most people, James," Remus said, "and it's nothing like anyone else's magic. We can't apply the normal rules to him."

In his room, Harry dumped his trunk down, shut and locked his door, and reached into his pocket to pull out his wand. He couldn't bear to hand it over to be snapped, so he'd taken the voice's suggestion and duplicated it in the moment he reached into his pocket, drawing out a false replica to hand over to Mr Athelstan.

When the potion finally wore off, he raged. He screamed and shouted and more than a few trees got damaged. Sirius just stood by and watched until the anger burnt itself out and Harry dropped to his knees and burst into tears, then Sirius pulled him against his chest and let him sob. Neither of them were surprised when he had a seizure.

* * *

He was confused the next morning when he woke up in his bed at home, then he remembered everything that happened the day before and miserably burrowed back under the covers to go to sleep again, Kiwi clutched against his chest. She was a small comfort.

He managed to get away with burying himself in books for three whole days before Sirius cleared his throat during dinner and asked, "Have you given any thought about what you want to do?"

"No," Harry muttered without looking up from his chicken.

"It's alright," Sirius was quick to reassure him. "You can take some time to think it over. We realise it's a lot to consider."

Much that he'd like to continue to ignore the issue, he knew that it was impractical and the voice was starting to get impatient.

 _We have better things to be researching than history you already know. Demons, remember? We have to figure out how to get you out of your deal,_ it said to him that evening as he lay in bed and stared at the ceiling.

"There might not be a way out," he said with a sigh.

 _ **Might**_ _. How stupid would it be if you died because you didn't work hard enough to find a way to live?_

"How stupid would it be to spend the last two years of my life pouring over books trying to find something that didn't exist?"

 _You_ _ **like**_ _pouring over books. Besides, what else are you going to do? Take your OWLs?_ it sneered.

"Why not?" Harry responded defensively.

 _What's the point? You couldn't do anything with them. You'll be dead before you're able to start working—scratch that, you'll be dead before you even get to take your NEWTs._

"I could take them early, like with the OWLs."

 _Oh yes,_ the voice drawled sarcastically. _Great. Let's spend the rest of your life studying to take exams that will serve you absolutely no purpose. Do you think Crowley's going to care if you get five NEWTs? Do you think the demons in hell will torture you less because you're a bookworm who memorised a tonne of crap? Hint: the answer's no._

"Tell me something, will I have to listen to you in hell? Because if not that's a good reason to let myself get eaten."

 _You don't mean that. You'd miss me in hell. I'd be the only good company you'd have._

* * *

"What do you think I should do?"

It was over a week since Harry was expelled and he still didn't have a clue what to do with himself, but now he was starting to get depressed about it. He'd spent a few days in sulky annoyance, insisting that he wasn't going to do anything because there was no point, and why should he work to do anything when the government itself conspired to get him kicked out of school?

But that passed, sped on by the voice who spent the entire time viciously insulting him for being pathetic, and now he was just left feeling miserable and lost. The adults had clearly been discussing it, however, because Sirius paused in the middle of eating dinner to answer immediately.

"We think it'd be a good idea if you tried to get your OWLs."

"Then what?"

"You can apply for a position at another school, although the sooner you do that the better."

"Like Beauxbatons or Durmstrang?"

"Not Durmstrang," Sirius said with a shake of his head. "I wouldn't let you go there if it was the only school on earth. But Beauxbatons is an option, yeah, or there's one in Brazil, Japan, Australia, and the States. There's three over there actually, one in Nevada, one somewhere in the middle I think, and the Salem Witches' Institute. Few others scattered about the world."

"I'm not a witch," Harry pointed out.

"And not everyone killed in the Salem witch trials was female," Remus reminded him with a smile. "They do accept male students and it is the best magical school in the world."

"They're really far away, though. And I can't speak French or Japanese or… what do they speak in Brazil?"

"Portuguese, I believe," Remus answered. "The other option is you're home schooled."

"What, by you guys?"

"I don't think I'd be a great teacher," James said, "or Sirius."

"Hey, I'd be a great teacher."

"Maybe if the class was on how to annoy one's teachers," Remus said dryly, then to Harry he added, "We'd teach you what we could, but hire tutors to fill in the gaps."

"Have you considered what you'd want to take at NEWT level?" James asked. "And what you want to do for a career?"

Harry shrugged, staring at his dinner and suddenly not feeling hungry. It was bad enough thinking of his NEWTs when he knew he'd die before he could take them; thinking about possible career options was even worse.

"Give it some thought," Remus said gently, noticing his mood dropping. "But I strongly advise taking your OWLs. At the very least, the time spent studying for them will give you a few extra months to consider what you'll do afterwards."

Harry liked the idea of putting off big decisions and he did want to take his OWLs—it'd be nice to accomplish _something_ worthwhile before he died, even if it was useless to him—so he finally opened the scroll of parchment McGonagall gave him. Each of his subjects was listed with the topics covered most often in the OWLs, plus a note saying that the Department of Education was required to provide mock exams to all OWL level students, including home schooled ones, so be sure to ask about it when he contacted them.

Sirius mentioned taking him to get a new wand, but Harry admitted to having kept his old one. After how long it took him to find one that suited, he didn't fancy buying another one, and he didn't want to face the rest of the wizarding world, so he would keep using his current one and Wish for it to look different so no one would notice. He wasn't sure anyone would anyway; ten days out of Hogwarts and he couldn't really remember what any of his friends' wands looked like, except that Tyler's was remarkably long.

* * *

In the time it took the Department of Education to send him the information about OWLs, Harry finally figured out the right combination of runes to counteract magic suppression. Nothing he read explained exactly how suppression runes worked, but he imagined it was like they sent out a barrier that pressed in on anything within their perimeter, pushing down on the magic he tried to give out. Assuming that theory was right, then his runes would turn that barrier back on itself, nullifying it.

When he'd first started researching, he'd thought of making a cloak like the Assistant's, but he couldn't wear that all the time and it would be no good if he wasn't wearing it when he ended up in a situation like the second Triwizard task. He could never know when someone might trap him in a circle again, so he decided to put the runes on all his clothes.

He tested it out by painting a circle of suppression runes on a large bit of cardboard and standing in it to make sure his clothes worked. At first he put the runes inside his clothes by conjuring bits of fabric, cutting them to shape, and Wishing them sewn to the inside. Unfortunately, not only did that feel weird against his skin, but when he tried to Wish his chair across the room, the magic rebound back on him and caused a seizure.

Later, when he was recovering from the seizure, he figured out what the problem had been. Quite simply, he'd put the runes in the wrong way, causing them to turn his own magic against him instead of turning the suppression runes on themselves. Fixing that was easy enough, but it took longer to come up with a solution for putting the runes comfortably in his clothes. Eventually, after ruining a couple of t-shirts, he figured out how to carefully word a Wish so only one side of the fibres were dyed, painting the runes inside his clothes without showing on the outside. Next time he tested it out, it worked.

When the Department of Education finally got back to him, they sent mock exams for all his subjects and a letter explaining that, if he was prepared to take the OWLs in June, then he could do so as a visitor at Hogwarts alongside the rest of the fifth years. Otherwise he'd have to wait until August after the Hogwarts' students' exams were marked and their results sent out. He started studying harder and longer, determined to take and pass them in June. Not only did he want to prove that he could, but he didn't want to miss the opportunity to see his friends.

On the night of the full moon, Harry chose to stay in the house. His only other option was going to Grimmauld Place, which was frankly creepy, especially when there would be only him and James there. Remus was still taking the Wolfsbane and he would be shut in his bedroom with Sirius, the door charmed to keep them both in. Even so, he made a few Wishes of his own, and stayed up most of the night half afraid the wolf would come crashing through their shared wall.

A week later, on the last day of March, he woke up and found an envelope on his desk. There were no news articles this time, just the card with the Dark Mark and a short message:

 _I can teach you things Hogwarts never could._

"I think we should put a Fidelius Charm on the house," Sirius said later as the four of them sat around the dining room table, still in pyjamas, the card at the centre.

James shook his head. "No."

"James, there's Death Eaters sneaking into our _house_. Fidelius might be the only thing that can keep this Assistant fucker out."

"And it'll keep _us_ in. I'm not being locked up again."

"It's not locking us up, James," Remus tried to reassure him. "It's a safety precaution, that's all."

"It's a cage. You guys haven't been trapped in a Fidelius charmed house; I have. I'm not doing it again."

"What if next time it's not just the Assistant?" Sirius said, starting to get angry. "Are you going to keep refusing it when he brings his friends with him—brings _Lucius_? Or Voldemort himself?"

James flinched at the name and seemed to shrink in on himself, looking away. Remus put a calming hand on Sirius' arm.

"I don't want to be trapped in, either," Harry said. "I want to be able to go flying and stuff."

"You will," Remus said to him and James. "This isn't like when you went into hiding during the first war. This is just to keep the Assistant and anyone else out, but you don't have to stay stuck up inside all the time."

"Then what's the point of putting a Fidelius up at all?" James retorted. "This Assistant bloke can just as easily get to him outside the house so if you're trying to protect him, it should be all the time."

"He does have a point about that, Remus," Sirius said, and Harry sat up straighter.

"You're not keeping me locked in. I can look after myself, you know."

"He could have killed you last night, kid. He was in and out of here without any of us knowing and Moony's a light sleeper. If anyone should have heard, it was him."

"The Assistant might not even have been here," Harry tried. "I can teleport things between places; he probably can too."

"He still knows where we live. He could turn up here any time and hurt any of us."

"I doubt he's going to do that. Voldemort wants me working for him; breaking into my home and attacking any of you is hardly going to convince me."

Sirius didn't look convinced.

 _If they're so desperate to keep the Assistant out, you could put up some protections. A little Wishing and we can probably keep even him out._

"Oh!"

All three adults look at him and Harry echoed the voice's suggestion. "It's not the Fidelius so we don't have to stay inside, but it's some extra protection."

"Will that work?" Remus asked. "Even if you're asleep or away?"

"It should do, as long as I word it right."

"I'd rather rely on something we know will work," Sirius said.

"You don't know the Fidelius will work," Harry countered, even though he was pretty sure it would. He couldn't see how even his magic could get him into a place hidden like that.

"I think maybe we need to take some time to think about it," Remus suggested.

"I don't," James muttered.

"We've got a month before he'll show up again anyway," Harry said with a shrug. "They've all come at the end of each month."

* * *

He took the mock OWL exams in the dining room, scribbling away under the watch of James or Sirius or Remus, an hourglass timer on the side, and then his three guardians marked the papers with the answer booklets that came with them. Arithmancy and Astronomy proved to be his weakest subjects, which didn't surprise him, but he also found he needed to spend more time on Herbology and Potions.

As the end of the month drew nearer, the issue of the Assistant was brought up again and eventually Sirius and Remus agreed to letting Harry Wish to keep the Assistant out. They had some doubts it would work while he slept, but Harry didn't and sure enough he woke up the next morning to find no envelopes on his desk.

But shortly before midday, the Muggle postman came by. He came at least one a week, usually only with junk mail and, in the summer, letters from Hermione to Harry, but Harry somehow wasn't surprised to find a white envelope with his name on it that day, the usual card and a message inside.

 _This world could be ours, Harry. With your power and my skill, we could put every foul Muggle in their place. We could right the wrongs of this world. Under my rule you could be reinstated at Hogwarts if you so desired, a Hogwarts reformed and made better, with no more useless teachers. There would be classes dedicated to magics Albus Dumbledore and the Ministry would have you never know even exist. Join me, Harry, and I can teach you so many things._

 _I really think you should reconsider this offer,_ the voice said.

"You're joking."

 _Not entirely. While I certainly don't relish the thought of bowing to anyone, let alone a man with half our power and a tendency to try and kill us, Voldemort has over fifty years of studying magic. He might just have the answers we need; at the very least, he can probably point us in the right direction. I'm sure him and his Death Eaters know all the best places to get the sort of information we're after. And then, once you've got it, you stab him in the back._

"Assuming he even dies," Harry said, although the voice had a point about potentially knowing a way out of his deal. But he also thought that if Voldemort ever found out he sold his soul to a demon, he'd do everything he could to make sure Harry _didn't_ find out how to escape his deal. He didn't believe for one minute that Voldemort would pass up the chance to see Harry killed, no matter how sincere his offers might be.

He started getting stressed as May wore on and began worrying that he wasn't really ready for the OWLs. More than once he stopped in the middle of studying to have a minor panic attack about how he was going to fail and never amount to anything, and his guardians had to sit him down and talk quietly to him until he calmed down again.

Once during one of his panic attacks he was ranting to Remus and accidentally let slip that he only had two years to live; for a brief moment he considered answering Remus' demands to know what he was talking about, but there was such fear in the man's eyes that Harry knew he couldn't let him or Sirius or James know that he was going to die. Even so, he felt terrible about wiping Remus' memory.

* * *

The Assistant was playing a game of Crucio Poker with Lucius, Bellatrix, and Antonin Dolohov when he felt Yaxley Apparate to the hospital. The Assistant spent the last few weeks there, since Yaxley had been out on some mission the Assistant wasn't permitted to know about.

They'd converted an old staff room into a common room, conjuring and transfiguring a bunch of mismatched furniture and a couple of tables. They'd put glass into the large windows but not bothered with curtains, the Azkaban escapees glad for the sunlight they'd missed during their imprisonment.

The Assistant, without even thinking about it, dropped his cards, vanished the glass from one of the windows and, hearing shocked shouts behind him, jumped out. He fell lightly to the ground, landing beside Yaxley just as the man reached the general admissions entrance. The Assistant could barely resist the urge to grab Yaxley in a bear hug and never let him go. He knew his Master wouldn't appreciate that, so he settled just for standing close.

"Back off," Yaxley snapped at him. "You're being ridiculous."

"I've missed you," the Assistant couldn't help saying, reaching for Yaxley's hand.

"You're ridiculous," Yaxley said again, snatching his hand away, but didn't object as the Assistant followed him inside. "You've not been summoned. You can't come in with me."

"I'll wait outside."

Still, it wasn't easy to remain in the hallway when Yaxley went in to see Voldemort. The Assistant stood outside, bouncing on the balls of his feet with impatience, unsure just how long he could restrain himself. Being away from his master got unpleasant and a month was a long time this early in the Bonding.

Two distant, lingering screams marked the end of the poker game, and shortly after slow footsteps sounded from the hall behind the Assistant.

"You owe Bellatrix six seconds," Lucius' voice said, slightly ragged.

The Assistant didn't look around. "Right."

"Can I assume James is this distressed?"

Lucius was the only other person that knew about the Bond; he'd provided information to Voldemort on it and given tips to Yaxley on how to utilise it.

The Assistant could hear the mocking smirk in his voice. He didn't care. "Not quite, but he'll be getting there. It'd be good if the Dark Lord recalled him soon."

"That's not up to either of us."

"Suppose not."

When the door finally swung open, the Assistant stalked inside immediately, ignoring Voldemort to go straight to Yaxley, dropping to one knee before him and bowing his head.

"Master," he murmured, voice full of unbridled relief and pleading and need, and when Yaxley laid a hand gently on his hair and said softly, "Harry," a shudder ran through him and he let out a small sigh. He didn't even care that it wasn't his chosen name.

"Assistant."

He turned only his upper body, but bowed his head lower to Voldemort. Yaxley's hand moved to settle on the back of his neck, his fingers cool against the Assistant's skin and his thumb rubbing in small circles.

"My lord."

"Next time you enter a room you will address me first."

"Yes, my lord. I apologise for my indiscretion."

"I am growing impatient of waiting for Harry Evans to respond to me, Assistant. Tell me what it will take to bring him to my side."

"My lord, I've already told you what I know. I gave you everything I could when you first asked me."

"Don't lie to the Dark Lord, Harry," Yaxley ordered and the Assistant couldn't help a small whimper, because that was an order he never wanted to hear. Worse still, one of those words was his Trigger. He knew it because he felt like his rib cage had been torn open and he choked on the instinctive urge to say he wasn't lying.

Voldemort noticed his reaction. He rose from his chair and slowly drew his wand. Yaxley's hand slipped from the Assistant's neck.

"Tell me what it will take to bring Harry Evans to my side," Voldemort repeated coldly. "You must know something. Everybody has one thing for which they will give anything. What would Harry sell his soul for?"

"Magic."

"He has magic in multitudes. What else?"

"Nothing. The only thing he sells his soul for is magic. It's always magic, ever since my original timeline."

"Sell it to whom?" Voldemort asked coldly.

"Crowley. A crossroads demon."

After that there was just a whole lot of pain.

* * *

When the next card came, Harry didn't show it to the adults. It came by owl so he pretended it'd been a letter from his friends and claimed that nothing came at all that month. As Sirius cautiously hoped it meant Voldemort had given up, Harry just sat and thought of the seven words that'd been on the card.

 _I know how to break your deal._

* * *

James wasn't sure if it was his Master that woke him, but he knew as soon as he opened his eyes that the time had finally come. He could feel him; he was closer than he'd been in a year.

It was little past two in the morning. Remus was off consorting with the werewolves again, which was good because he was a light sleeper and James didn't need that right now. Sirius was fast asleep; James could hear him snoring even from across the hall. Only Harry was uncertain. His light was off, but James still carefully edged his door open and peered in to check Harry was actually in bed.

He was, so James dressed quickly and quietly, took his wand and shoes, and pulled on his Invisibility Cloak before creeping downstairs. He didn't put his shoes on until he was outside, then he headed quickly towards the forest behind the house.

He didn't know where he was going, but he knew how to get there. There was a tugging in his chest, like someone attached a chain to him and was pulling on it, and he knew that following it would take him to his Master.

A mile later, he sped up, knowing he was close, and then broke into a clearing where his Master stood, wand up and aimed in James' general direction. James stopped and pulled off his cloak, and his Master smiled and lowered his wand.

"Precious."

James flung himself down to his knees in front of him, battling the urge to just throw his arms around his Master's waist. He knew better than that, but after so long without seeing him he just wanted that touch. When his Master laid a hand on his head, he shuddered with relief and couldn't help leaning into the touch.

"You've missed me," his Master said, sounding pleased and a little bit surprised. James couldn't fathom why. Of course he'd missed him.

"You've been gone for so long. I thought you'd come for me sooner."

His Master began combing his fingers through James' hair. "I would have," he said apologetically, "but the Dark Lord said I couldn't. I am as bound to follow his orders as you to follow mine."

That wasn't true, but James knew better than to say as much.

"Are you going to take me to him now?" James asked.

"No, I need you to stay. Don't look at me like that," his Master chided when James looked up woefully. "It's not my decision, and it's only for a little longer. The Dark Lord has something he needs you to do, something more than just spying. I don't even need to transfigure you into a woman for anything this time."

"When it's done, can I go with you?"

"Yes."

"What is it? I'll do it right now."

His Master laughed. "You can't do it right now. Two weeks, precious. You can manage. Do this right, and you'll be well rewarded, by me and the Dark Lord."

"Just tell me what to do," James said, because the only reward he needed was to be with his Master again.

* * *

The evening before the OWLs, Harry and James took the floo into the Three Broomsticks, where they'd stay for the next two weeks. Every morning Harry would go up to the school to sit his exams, stay for lunch, and return before dinner.

His guardians refused to let him go alone, but it wasn't necessary for all three of them to come. When James said he wanted to, the others had been surprised, but he'd claimed it was time he started getting out more on his own and this was a good opportunity.

Harry had his green, non-magical eye in and he found it odd, not having worn it since the third task almost a year ago now. He grew used to being able to look around all over the place, but he didn't want to risk accidentally leaving it in when he went to an exam and get sent away or made to do the exam one-eyed. He had no inclination to wear it under a glamour either; he didn't quite trust himself not to cheat if he had the chance, and he wanted to prove himself good enough to do these exams himself.

He spent that night obsessively reading his Charms text, muttering spells and their wand movements. The last thing he needed was for one of the examiners to catch him doing the wrong wand movements but still managing the spell.

He didn't eat much the next morning, too nervous, then James walked him up to the school and wished him luck before leaving him with McGonagall, who escorted him up to the castle.

"Are you feeling confident?"

"I was yesterday."

" _I'm_ confident in you," she said with a small smile.

The fifth and seventh years were already congregated in the Entrance Hall when they reached the castle and Harry got plenty of surprised stares when he entered.

"Harry!"

He hardly glimpsed Hermione before she grabbed him in a crushing hug.

"Hey, 'mione," he wheezed, and pat her back with one hand while waving to Neville with the other. "Missed you too."

"It's so good to see you again. How are you? Do you think you're ready for the exam? I don't know if I am, I've been studying so much, but—"

"Hermione," he cut in, and she gulped on a choked word. "You'll be fine. Smartest in your year, aren't you?"

"Second, maybe," a voice behind Harry said, and he turned with a smile. Draco smiled back at him.

"I've beat you in all our exams before, Malfoy," Hermione said stiffly.

"Yes, but these exams aren't marked by biased teachers."

"Our teachers—!" Hermione began, but the Great Hall doors swung open then and the examiners started calling people in.

"We'll all do fine," Harry said, hoping it was true.

* * *

He felt a lot more confident when he finished. There wasn't anything on the exam he never heard of before, which was what he worried about most in having missed a year, but he did wonder if accepting advice from the voice in his head counted as some form of cheating.

He was the centre of attention at lunch, everyone asking why he was there as he caught up with his friends. Cid was dating Toni Kaidkin and Tyler's plan to kiss their whole year was as complete as it could get, with only a few students refusing to accept even a brief peck on the lips. He now had his sights set on the rest of the school.

After lunch all the fifth and seventh years went into the side room and waited to get called forward in small groups to take the practical part of the exam. Everyone else was done alphabetically, but Harry was stuck on the end. He wished he was at the start instead, so he wouldn't have to spend ages waiting nervously.

Only when Professor Marchbanks, the tiny little witch who was his examiner, looked surprised when Harry's plate lifted into the air did he realise that he unthinkingly cast the Levitation Charm silently, so focused on the wand movements that he forgot to speak the incantation aloud, and he winced, but Marchbanks asked in the loud voice of someone whose hearing was going, "Can you do other spells silently?"

"Um… yes."

"Impressive. Not many your age can."

"So it's okay if I do them all silently?"

"Can you?"

"Yes."

"Alright then," she said, taking a rat cage from the floor by her feet and letting the animal out onto the table in front of her. "I'd like you to turn this orange…"

He left the Great Hall afterwards feeling perfectly confident about the practical. Even finding Snape waiting in the Entrance Hall to escort him to the gates didn't dampen his mood.

"How was it?" Snape asked him as they walked down the path.

"Good, I think."

Snape nodded. "Lily got top marks in her Charms OWL. I don't doubt you've done just as well."

Harry glanced at him in surprise, but Snape's gaze was fixed forward and he said nothing more.

 _Maybe your Daddy really does care about you._

Harry made the walk from the gates to Hogsmeade alone then found James just leaving Honeydukes, a bag hanging from his wrist.

"I was just about to walk up to meet you," he said as they headed towards the Three Broomsticks. "How did it go?"

"Pretty good. Got enough chocolate?"

James glanced down at the bag with a wan smile and shrugged. "I thought you might want some. You know how Remus swears by it as the cure-all for everything."

"But I don't need curing of anything."

"Nerves," James answered promptly. "Either that or you can eat it in celebration of getting through your first exam without disaster."

"That sounds like a plan," Harry agreed.

He spent the evening nervously nibbling at the chocolate while he studied for the Transfiguration exam the next day.

He was a little less confident about how he did on the theory than he had been about Charms, feeling sure he forgot something, but he let the worry slip away as he joined the Gryffindor table for lunch to chat with Hermione and Neville. Several people objected to his presence, but as he pointed out he was no longer a student so technically had no house, and no one came to kick him off.

He did as well with the Transfiguration practical as he did with Charms, then on Wednesday they had Herbology, which he did alright in until he had a seizure halfway through the practical. He wasn't surprised; even just the stress of revision increased them so he expected to have one during the exams themselves. Defence Against the Dark Arts was on Thursday and he was confident he passed it perfectly, and he sped through the Ancient Runes exam on Friday morning, completing it easily.

Overall, he was feeling pretty good about it all, but he was glad for the break the weekend would provide.

He was reluctantly saying goodbye to his friends after lunch on Friday when Dumbledore came up to him in the Entrance Hall. "Mr Evans, a delight to see you again."

Harry nodded a greeting, stepping away from Draco, thinking Dumbledore was there to escort him to the gate. Instead, Dumbledore pulled a badge from his pocket and held it out. It was round and purple, with VISITOR stamped across it in yellow letters.

"I know you don't have an exam this afternoon, and neither do any of your friends? I thought you might like to borrow the Hogwarts library for the afternoon to get ahead on your revising for Monday's exam."

Harry took the badge, looking up at him hopefully. "I can?"

"Absolutely. I am headmaster, after all, I can grant anyone a visitor's pass to the castle. I will have to insist that you stay with either Mister Malfoy or Miss Granger the entire time, and clearly wear your badge, and I cannot permit you into the house common rooms and dorms, but other than that please feel free to work in the library, classroom, or out on the grounds. The weather is delightful today."

He smiled at Harry then turned and walked off, whistling. Across the Entrance Hall, Umbridge looked like she might explode with suppressed fury.

A grin spread across Harry's face as he pinned the badge to his shirt.

"Harry, this is great!" Hermione said, grabbing his arm in delight, already trying to tug him towards the marble staircase. "We can check each other's Potions' level and—"

"Hold it, Granger," Draco said, grabbing Harry's other arm forcibly enough that Harry slipped free of Hermione's grasp. "We've got all weekend to study for Potions; I've only got my boyfriend for an afternoon."

"You mean you're not going to _revise_?" She might as well have been asking if he intended to go outside wearing nothing but a tea cosy.

Draco shrugged. "We'll probably get some done, but I want to make the most of the time I have with him. I might remind you that you've been friends with him longer than I have."

"Harry, surely you want to revise? Neville, tell him!"

"It's Harry's decision," Neville said diplomatically, and Hermione stomped her foot.

"We will revise," Harry promised her, "but Draco's right. I want to hang out with him for a bit. We'll join you later, alright? Dumbledore said I can stay all afternoon, so that means until dinner. And I have to go down to the gates anyway," he realised. "James'll be expecting me and I'll need to tell him why I'm staying."

"But, Harry—!"

"Later, Hermione, I swear."

She objected further, but Draco was already pulling him out the doors.

Draco hung back when Harry went to the gates, speaking through them to let James know he was staying. James glanced past Harry to Draco, but he gave no indication of any feelings towards him, negative or otherwise.

After that, they headed to the lake, walking around it and passing other fifth and seventh years revising for their exams, until they reached an area that was a little more private where they could sit down together and not get seen.

"You know I'm not technically your boyfriend anymore," Harry pointed out as they settled down together. "I seem to recall dumping you."

"Then you gave me a gorgeous glass butterfly which you conjured without a wand, and I still want an explanation for that."

"You just didn't notice it, and what does that have to do with not being boyfriends anymore?"

"You don't give presents like that to not-boyfriends, but if you insist." He took Harry's hand and asked, "Harry, will you go out with me?"

Harry had to laugh at his ridiculously sombre expression and tone.

"You want a boyfriend whose going home in a week and might never see you again?"

"That's what visiting is for," Draco said. "You can come around mine anytime you like. I told you before, I don't mind doing the long distance thing. Unless you're not interested anymore…?"

Harry smiled, squeezing the hand Draco started to pull away. "I am."

Draco grinned. "So we're boyfriends again."

"Yeah, we are," Harry said, and kissed him.

* * *

"What are you thinking about?"

They lay together, Harry using Draco's chest as a pillow and Draco running his fingers through Harry's hair. Harry had his eyes shut, listening to Draco's heartbeat, and he was so content and relaxed that he answered completely honestly and without reservation.

"Sex."

Draco's hand stilled in his hair. "Seriously?"

Harry nodded. Despite the voice's objections and Harry's own initial reservations about a relationship, he really enjoyed being with Draco. Thus far things between them had stayed decidedly chaste; they'd cuddled and snogged, but that was it. His feelings on sex and the various related acts hadn't really changed—he still felt no great desire to engage in it, but he also wasn't opposed to it and he didn't mind giving it a try if that was what Draco wanted.

"Abstract thinking or something more specific?"

"Kind of specific?" He lifted his head and propped himself up on his elbows, facing Draco but staring at the grass instead of meeting his gaze. "I was just thinking that maybe, if you wanted to, we could do… something. Maybe not _sex_ sex, and not right now, but something this summer maybe."

"I thought you weren't interested in any of that stuff."

Harry shrugged, plucking blades of grass. "I'm not interested like other people. Everyone else seems to go around looking at people and thinking 'I'd like to have sex with her' or 'he's not my type' or whatever."

"Not _everyone_ ," Draco muttered.

"But you do that, right?" Harry said. "You see someone you think is attractive want to do sex stuff with him?"

"Yeah. Don't you? What do you think when you see someone attractive then?" he asked when Harry shook his head.

"I dunno. 'He's pretty.' "

"Yeah, but then what?"

" 'Is he nice?' Depends where I am and what he's doing and what I'm doing and just… I mean, what do you think when you see a pretty girl?"

"I'm not attracted to girls."

"Yeah, but you can still recognise a pretty one. But you don't think 'I'd like to go out with her', you just…" He trailed off with a shrug, but Draco seemed to get the idea.

"You're like that with everyone?"

Harry smiled. "Yeah. Sex and kissing and things just don't factor into it."

"But you do like kissing. Either that or you're really good at faking."

"I do like it, but I wouldn't miss it if I couldn't ever do it again."

Draco pouted. "You wouldn't miss these lips?"

"Nope."

He gasped dramatically, putting a hand to his chest. "You wound me, Evans."

Harry just rolled his eyes. Draco linked his fingers behind his head, looking at him.

"So you're the same with sex and other things? Blow jobs? Hand jobs? You like them but can do perfectly fine without?"

Harry shrugged, gaze going to the grass again. "I don't know. I've not done any of them so I don't know if I like them. Have you actually done any of them?"

Draco's cheeks went pink and he turned his eyes skyward. "Some over the clothes groping and grinding, but that's it. That was before we were going out, by the way."

"I figured that."

Draco looked back to him. "So you wouldn't mind trying?"

"If you want to."

"I definitely want to, but not if you don't want to."

"I don't mind trying," Harry said. "I do kind of wonder what it'd be like, and seeing as I have a perfectly willing boyfriend to test things out on…"

"Test?" Draco repeated, getting up on his elbows with an offended look. "What do you think I am, a lab rat?"

"Pasty as one," Harry said, then yelped and rolled onto his back when Draco pounced at him, whipped his wand out, and prodded it against Harry's chest.

" _Rictumsempra!_ "

Harry burst out laughing, squirming uncontrollably as invisible hands started to tickle him. Draco straddled his hips.

"Take it back."

"Never!"

"Take it back or I don't remove the charm."

Harry pressed his lips together, holding out, but the tickling was persistent and it wasn't long before he cracked.

"Alright, alright, I take it back!"

Draco cast the counter charm, but remained sat on Harry's hips. "Now say 'Draco Malfoy is a porcelain beauty, not a pasty rat'."

"I'm not saying that."

Draco waved his wand threateningly in front of Harry's face. "Say it," he said, then blinked and frowned. "What is that face you're pulling?"

Harry stopped pulling it. "It was supposed to be a puppy dog look."

Draco sniggered. "You might want to work on that. You looked like a demented squirrel."

Harry blew a raspberry at him. "Not all of us had parents to practice on as bratty little kids."

"I wasn't a bratty little kid," Draco said, looking a little awkward. Harry pretended not to notice; all his friends got like that when he made comments about his childhood. It wasn't any attempt on his part to earn pity or anything like that, the words just came out and he didn't realise until after that it made other people feel awkward.

"Yeah, right. I bet you were the _worst_ kind of bratty kid."

"I was a precocious and adorable child," Draco said with a little sniff. "Everyone said so."

"Maybe to your face…"

"Do you want me to use the Tickling Charm again?"

Harry grinned, made a little Wish, and twisted, throwing Draco off him. Draco landed on his back and Harry scrambled to his feet. "You'll have to catch me first," he said, and grinned at Draco's surprised look before breaking into a run.

* * *

Harry spent most of the weekend studying for the Potions exam on Monday, but he had another seizure on Sunday and James convinced him to take a walk after he recovered. He had to admit the fresh air and ice cream refreshed his mind and made it easier to concentrate when he went back to his books.

He thought he did well in the theory on Monday morning, but although he made his potion without disaster that afternoon he was pretty sure it wouldn't have stood up to Snape's strict standards. He got Tuesday free—the Care of Magical Creatures exam was then—and he spent it studying for Arithmancy and Astronomy.

The written Astronomy paper was Wednesday morning and he couldn't remember if Ganymede was one of Jupiter's moon or Saturn's. He was sure he did even worse on the practical part that night. He'd always struggled with it; even when he managed to find the planets, stars, and constellations in the sky, he struggled to match them up to the charts on paper.

He had to ask for extra parchment twice in the History of Magic exam the next afternoon and his handwriting started to deteriorate towards the end as he wrote faster, trying to include as much as he could before his time was up. He was pretty sure he wrote more than anyone else in the hall and he thought that if he didn't get an 'O' on this exam, he'd seek out Voldemort and join him immediately, because if he couldn't ace his favourite and best subject then the world had gone mad and it didn't matter if he sided with the Dark Lord.

He hated having to say goodbye to his friends again. It was worse this time because he didn't have a Draught of Peace to make things easier. Even getting a goodbye kiss from Draco didn't make him feel any better—in fact, it made him feel worse because it reminded him just how much he missed it all, and he was grateful to McGonagall for not saying anything as she took him down to the gate. He'd feel even worse if he was rude to her because of his bad mood.

"You want to get an ice cream before we leave?" James suggested as they headed towards Hogsmeade, having met him at the gate. Harry shook his head, kicking a stone along the ground, hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans.

"I just want to go home."

"Sure. Come on."

They returned to the Three Broomsticks to fetch their bags, but just as the door swung shut behind Harry, James turned to him and said, "I'm sorry about this, Harry."

Harry's gaze snapped to him. "For what?" he asked, and then someone reached around him and snapped a pair of rune-etched shackles around his wrists.

* * *

 **A/N:** As you can imagine, shit's about to get rough so brace yourselves, folks.


	28. Chapter 28

**Chapter 28**

Harry twisted his head around to find the Assistant behind him. He struggled but without his magic he was powerless. His jeans and t-shirt had the counteraction runes inside them, like all his clothes now, but they weren't working.

He struggled and yelled, trying to squirm free and hoping the noise would bring help. He managed to slam an elbow into the Assistant's gut, which made him gasp with more pain that Harry would have expected, but he still didn't let go of Harry.

"Fuck, kid, stop that, I've been beat up enough already. And don't bother screaming; the room is soundproofed."

So focused on the Assistant, Harry didn't notice Lucius until he walked forwards and James moved instantly to his side.

"Well done, precious," Lucius said, and James smiled at him.

"You'll take me with you now?"

"Yes."

"You—!" Harry gaped, staring at James, then screamed, " _Fuck you!_ I trusted you!"

"Harry—" James began, but Harry spat at him.

"You should have stayed in your cellar. And you—" he twisted his head up to look at the Assistant "—I trusted you, too."

"You're breaking my heart, kid," the Assistant said. He almost sounded like he meant it, but Harry trusted nothing now.

The Assistant Apparated him away. They reappeared in the car park of what appeared to be an abandoned hospital, the tarmac cracked by overgrowing plants, the building before them crumbling and ruined.

"You going to walk or do I need to float you in?" the Assistant asked, giving Harry a nudge towards the hospital.

Harry said nothing, but he walked, not wanting to get levitated inside like a sack of grain.

There was a patch of grass between the car park and the ambulance sliproad before the hospital. When they stepped off the grass to the sliproad, the hospital suddenly changed appearance. It was in full repair and although there was none of the bustle one expected at a hospital, Harry caught glimpses of movement through some of the windows.

The Assistant guided him in through general admissions, up a staircase, and eventually into a dark sitting room. Only a small amount of sunlight broke around the heavy dark curtains, leaving Harry just able to make out the shape of a single chair and a sofa.

Voldemort stood by the chair, one hand resting on the back, and the Assistant shoved Harry to his knees. Harry didn't try to stand again. His head started throbbing as soon as they appeared outside the hospital and only got worse the closer he came to Voldemort.

"Harry," Voldemort greeted. It almost sounded like it was meant to be friendly, but his cold, high voice just sent a shiver down Harry's spine. "You have been incredibly rude to me. Why have you ignored my every attempt to contact you? I didn't even receive a refusal from you."

"Because you're a piece of shit," Harry said, trying to sound braver than he felt. He still had his wand and hopefully they didn't know he could use it even with the shackles, but he knew his skill at wand magic was nowhere close to Voldemort's level.

"I am offering you something incredible, Harry," Voldemort said, his tone hinting at impatience. "A chance to fully utilise the power you hold."

"You mean you want to turn me into a lying, torturing, murdering arsehole like _him_ ," Harry replied, jerking his head towards the Assistant.

"Stand up, Harry," Voldemort said, settling in the throne-like armchair. "Sit with me. Only my servants should kneel before me. Assistant, leave us."

The Assistant hesitated but bowed his head and left as Harry got to his feet.

"There is no use trying to run," Voldemort said to Harry and gestured to the sofa. "Sit down and let us talk. You have a very misguided notion of what I do; understandable, given the people you associate with, but I wish to re-educate you on the matter."

"There's nothing to re-educate me on," Harry replied, staying in place. "You're a murdering scumbag. Everyone knows that."

"I am trying to make our world a better place, Harry. I want to remove the people who are detrimental to our society, who threaten our safety, who weaken the wizarding population."

"People like my mother?"

"I gave your mother the choice to stand aside. She chose to die for you."

Harry wished he could call Voldemort a liar, but he knew it was true. He heard it every time a Dementor got near him, his mother pleading for his life as Voldemort ordered her to move aside.

"And then you tried to kill me, and you tried again when I stopped you getting the Philosopher's Stone, and you would have last year as well if the Assistant hadn't turned up."

"If you expect an apology from me, Harry, you will receive none. I took the steps I deemed necessary to ensure I could continue with my work, but I know now that you are not a threat to me."

 _Don't correct him!_

"I'm not going to. I'm not a com-"

He broke off.

 _Not a complete idiot?_ the voice finished dryly. _So you didn't just speak aloud to me right in front of him? Because that wouldn't be idiotic at all._

Harry didn't see why; it wasn't like Voldemort didn't already know he had a voice in his head.

"Not going to what?" Voldemort asked coldly.

"Expect an apology from you," Harry said. "Monsters never apologise from their actions."

"You are pushing the limits of my patience, Harry. I am giving you a chance to become something great. Beside me, you could be more than you will ever be if you continue to stand alongside Albus Dumbledore."

"Beside you? Don't you mean at your feet? You'd never let someone stand beside you as an equal."

"I would allow you to stand as my right hand man."

"Really? And how will the rest of the Death Eaters react to that—the child you tried to kill joining their ranks and instantly becoming your favourite? Because somehow I don't think they'd like that."

"Their opinions are irrelevant. I am their leader; they will respect my decisions."

"Or you'll torture them, right? That's what you do to people who step out of line, isn't it?"

"A leader has to remind his people of their place or they will not respect him."

When Harry said nothing to that, Voldemort tried another tactic. "I know how to break your deal."

Harry swallowed and shifted slightly, the shackles on his wrists clinking as he moved. "You're lying," he said without conviction. "You're only saying that to get me to join you."

"I don't make promises I can't keep, Harry. I know of a way to avoid being dragged to hell when your time is up, which is in two years, is it not?"

"How do you even know that? I've never told anyone."

"You are not the only person to sell their soul for power."

"The Assistant," Harry guessed.

"He should have died at eighteen, as you will, and yet he stands alive today. Join me and I will permit him to tell you how."

 _Sacrificing your morals is a small price to pay for not dying young,_ the voice remarked. _Surely whatever he asks of you is worth it to live a full life. We can always just kill him later._

Harry licked at his dry lips. It'd be a lie to say he didn't agree with the voice at least a little, but…

"I don't trust him."

"He's helped you before."

"And now he's just handed me to you. I don't trust anyone who does that. Anything he says will break my deal is probably a lie."

"So you've simply resigned yourself to death?" Voldemort asked. For once, there was no subtle threat of violence in his voice. It was pure curiosity, like he couldn't comprehend how anyone could possibly do such a thing.

"No, but I'll find my own way out. I'm not trusting anything the Assistant says ever again."

"I can help you find that way, Harry."

Harry smiled thinly. "I don't trust you, either. Right now, I don't trust anyone, and I'm never going to work for you, so if you want to kill me, just get on with it."

Voldemort settled back in his chair, half hidden in shadow. "I don't want to kill you."

"What were all those attacks before then?" Harry asked incredulously.

"I don't want to kill you _now_ ," Voldemort amended. "Surely you've been told why I first went after you."

"The prophecy."

"Precisely. But now I know its full contents, I have no concerns."

Harry said nothing, eying him doubtfully. Dumbledore had suggested Voldemort might turn his attentions away from Harry now he knew the full prophecy, but Harry couldn't believe Voldemort would actually do it.

"You see, Harry," Voldemort went on like a teacher lecturing a class, "the prophecy states that a child would be born with the power to vanquish me. Do you know the definition of 'vanquish'? It means 'to defeat thoroughly'." Voldemort bent his arm at the elbow and propped his chin on his fist, smiling faintly. "It does not mean 'to kill'."

"So?" Harry said. He had an idea of where this was heading, but hardly dared believe it.

"One could argue that the prophecy has been fulfilled. Did you not thoroughly defeat me fourteen years ago? I was painfully ripped from my body, left powerless and helpless for over a decade. Everything I had worked towards was ruined in a single instance. How could that not be called a thorough defeat?"

"So you're saying the prophecy's complete and irrelevant now?" Harry said sceptically. "What about the part about dying at the hands of each other and neither can live while the other survives?"

"Difficult to interpret," Voldemort said. "But are you not alive, while I survive? Am I not alive, while you survive? Either the prophecy has passed and those words are meaningless now, or they were always meaningless and I was fool to ever put such stock in it."

Harry still didn't believe what he was hearing, but—"You've really given up on trying to kill me?"

Voldemort lowered his hand, fingers curling around the arm of the chair, but it was the other hand that caught Harry's attention, reaching into his robe for his wand.

"That, I never claimed. I do not _want_ to kill you when I could have you working for me, but it does not mean I _won't_ if you continue to refuse me."

His wand came out and up, pointing steadily at Harry's face. Harry stepped back and tried instinctively to Wish it away, reaching for his own wand only when the Wish failed.

"So answer me now, Harry: will you join me, or not?"

* * *

"Kneel."

Lucius sat in an armchair in the corner of the room he claimed as his own, and James kneeled before him. He'd done a lot to repair it, and he'd redecorated; Lucius needed some comfort in his life, especially after six months in Azkaban. He hid the bland stone and tiles walls behind tapestries and curtains, he'd transfigured glass to put into the windows, and he placed carpet down over the floor. He'd got himself a proper, comfortable bed, the armchair, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe to hold the clothes Narcissa had left in a drop point for him.

She wouldn't let him come into the manor nor meet with him directly. Lucius wasn't offended; the fact that she wouldn't meet him meant she was concerned about leading the Aurors to him. They both knew she would be under watch precisely to see if she contacted Lucius. That she refused to see him meant she still cared, divorce or not.

Lucius gently took James' chin in one hand, tilting his head up slightly to inspect his face. He could feel the tension in James' whole body and could only imagine how he was feeling. Lucius himself felt a sense of relief at having James back with him, a feeling he hadn't expected. He never really noticed the feelings brought on by the Bond when he was with James, but he felt its absence when James wasn't around.

"You seem to be in good health, at least, and I think there's a little more colour in your face. It was always a pity I could never take you out. I hope you've taken advantage of being able to get outside this past year."

"I have." James paused, then cautiously said, "It was nice to get out again."

"I imagine it was. Let me see my mark."

James had relaxed at his first words, but he suddenly tensed as Lucius reached for the collar of his robes and actually made to grab Lucius' wrist. Narrowing his gaze, Lucius jerked the cloth down and sucked in a sharp breath as he saw the jagged scar covering the words carved into the skin beneath James' collarbone.

"Who did this to you?" he demanded.

"I did."

Lucius stared at him a moment, then grabbed his hair and wrenched his head back hard enough to make James gasp. "Give me a good reason why I shouldn't put my wand to you."

"I punished myself for it."

Lucius didn't expect that, his hand loosening. "How?"

James lifted his hand to unbutton his robes. Lucius let go of him, watching James undress to the waist, and his eyes widened when the robes fell away to reveal several large scars cut across James' chest. James lifted a hand to the one cutting across his collarbone, the least vicious of them all. It ran straight through the words, like a strikeout, but they were still distinguishable beneath.

"Master, I'm sorry," he said, lowering his chin. "I know I shouldn't have done it, I feel awful about it, I really do. I'm so sorry. I punished myself but I know I deserve worse."

Lucius had been ready to use the Cruciatus Curse on him a minute ago, but at that he sighed and simply asked, "Why did you do it?"

"I was angry," James said miserably. "I knew you were free from Azkaban but you didn't come for me. I missed you, and I wasn't thinking clearly. I'm sorry."

"I heard you the first time. I won't punish you this time, but I'm the only one that gets to mark you, understand? Your punishments come from me."

"Yes, Master."

"Perhaps we can get rid of these scars. The knife wasn't enchanted?"

"No."

"Dittany should work then, if I remember correctly."

A knock came then and Lucius glanced over at the door, calling for entry. James looked around as it swung open to reveal Bellatrix. Her gaze immediately fixed on James, mouth twisting in an ugly scowl.

"So you've got your little pet back."

"For a short while," Lucius said, combing his fingers through James' hair. James shivered, leaning into the touch and, when Lucius leant back in his chair, settling on the floor beside him, tilting his head back against Lucius thigh so Lucius' hand could remain comfortably settled on his head.

Bellatrix watched them with open disgust. "That certainly explains a lot."

"What are you talking about, Bellatrix?"

"Why you kept him. I hadn't realised you played for that team, Lucius, but is enslaving a man really the only way you could get one to service you?"

Lucius smiled coldly. "Bellatrix, you might not have been able to keep your husband satisfied, but Narcissa was always the only person I needed in my bed."

"I'm perfectly capable of satisfying a man," Bellatrix spat. "Just ask Antonin."

"I really don't want to know about you and Antonin. It's bad enough to hear when you forget the Silencing Charms."

"Jealous, Luci?" Bellatrix mocked. "He's the only man around here getting any. Do you wish I'd picked you instead?"

"Bellatrix, it would take the Imperius Curse to get me into your bed."

"Even if you were worth the effort, I wouldn't take you to bed. The floor would be enough."

"And that," Lucius said with a curl of his lip, "is why I'd never sleep with you. Like your sister, I actually have standards when it comes to my lovers. I don't sleep with any whore that thinks the floor is a good place to have sex. Tell me, is there any of our comrades that you _haven't_ slept with beside me?"

"She hasn't shagged me yet," came the Assistant's voice, and then he appeared in the doorway. He shot Bellatrix a flirty grin that she rolled her eyes at, but his expression shuttered when he saw James, eyes raking over the scars on his chest.

"Pull your robe up, precious," Lucius ordered, then said to the Assistant, "Keep your gaze off my pet unless you want Preston to hear about it."

The Assistant winced at that, but lifted his eyes to Lucius. "I wouldn't touch James unless he lets me, and given that he's as straight as you are, that won't happen. For future reference, James, a good shag will ease the itch better than a knife will. Drugs are even better."

James looked up from buttoning his robes, startled, then shot Lucius a questioning look. Lucius patted his head and he settled down.

"He will not take drugs."

The Assistant shrugged. "So a shag. Poor bloke deserves it; hasn't been laid in more than a decade. I mean, I assume, anyway, unless Sirius managed to get you out to pick a girl up sometime this past year? Or you were picking up whores for him, Luci?"

"Don't call me that," Lucius snapped, for what must have been the fiftieth time.

Then a bang shook the whole hospital.

* * *

Harry clung to his wand with both hands, fingers cramping with the effort to hold it steady as it shook in his grip. The dark room was lit up by gold light as streams arced off the beam connecting his wand to Voldemort's. He had no idea what was going on and, judging by his astonished look, neither did Voldemort.

The beams surrounded them in a dome of gold. Beyond it Harry could make out a faint thumping sound from the direction of the door until a strange, unearthly music filled the room, and Harry found holding his wand suddenly much harder. Even so, he clung to it, gritting his teeth as he fought to keep the vibrating wood from leaping out of his hands. Beads of light appeared on the thread connecting his wand to Voldemort's, sliding up and down. As they slowly moved closer and closer to the tip of Harry's wand, he concentrated on forcing them away. He didn't know why, but he didn't want them touching his wand; he had an instinctive feeling it would be bad for him.

Slowly at first and then more steadily, the beads moved away from him along the thread. They faltered briefly at the other end, just before the tip of Voldemort's wand, and Harry could see sweat gleaming on Voldemort's bald head, then one of the beads connected and echoing screams burst out.

Harry had read about the Reverse Spell Effect but he'd never actually seen it in action. He assumed that's what was happening now as smoking images began to pour out of Voldemort's wand, some of them innocuous objects and then some man's disembodied head.

That was when Harry decided he'd had enough. The wand was vibrating so hard in his hand he wasn't sure he could hold on any longer, and he didn't want to see what else would come out of Voldemort's wand. He wrenched his wand up, the connection broke, and he staggered as the haunting music faded and the gold dome vanished. The ghostly images remained, but they were fading.

The door of the room crashed open. Harry swept his wand towards it and said the first spell he thought of—a Tripping Jinx—that sent the people outside crashing to their backs. He didn't try slipping by them, but went for a window, wrenched the curtains open, and broke the glass with a Blasting Curse. Without even checking how far he had to fall, he climbed out and dropped to the ground. They'd only come up one flight of stairs earlier; he was sure it wasn't so far he couldn't survive.

He hit the ground, felt his ankle twist, rolled forwards and ended up on his back. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he forced himself to his feet and limped across the gravel, moving as fast as his bad foot would allow him. He was in what had probably been a car park before—not the one from before, a smaller one, probably for staff only—but there was a field beyond it, overgrown with grass half as tall as Harry himself, and beyond that he could see a chapel and the roofs of some houses. A village, which meant someone who could help him.

A jet of red light whizzed past his head and he yelped, throwing himself to one side and hitting the ground again. He looked back to see Voldemort standing at the window, furious, and spared a second to listen to the voice wonder why it was a bolt of red instead of green, then he scrambled to his feet again and stumbled on.

He paused at the edge of the field to look back at the hospital. Voldemort was gone from the window but three figures were just leaving through a door—Lucius, Bellatrix Lestrange, and Antonin Dolohov. He recognised the latter two from the pictures in the newspaper when they escaped Azkaban. All had wands in hand and moved faster than him, unhampered by chains or a bad foot, and he looked away, pushing through the overgrown field and keeping himself hunched so as to present a smaller target, thankful for once that he was shorter than most people his age.

But it didn't help him much. Two spells shot past him, then something hit him in the back. He went falling forwards, but before he hit the ground something hooked into his gut and he was wrenched backward. It pulled him hard and fast enough that he cleared the field before he came down, landing painfully on the gravel. He was dragged across it several feet, crying out as it rubbed against the bare skin of his arms.

He came to stop at the feet of Bellatrix, pushed himself to his hands and knees, and then—

" _Crucio!_ "

* * *

Harry fully expected to get dragged before Voldemort again and killed, or thrown in a dungeon and tortured _then_ killed, but instead he was woke up from a seizure in a room that looked as if it had once been an office. There was still a desk pushed to one side, but a bed had been tucked into the corner, a simple metal-framed single with a thin mattress and a couple of blankets and pillows. A tray of soup, bread, and a glass of water sat on the desk.

He got out of the bed with a groan. He ached like he had last February, that bone deep pain that apparently came from the Cruciatus Curse and made him glad he couldn't remember how the actual curse felt. Despite it, he forced himself to his feet and staggered to an adjacent bathroom. It had just a toilet and sink, but it was enough. He drank from the tap, not about to trust the food given to him, and then tried to break through the window and door. The window had no glass, just a sheet of wood covering it, but it wouldn't break, and the door refused to open. He tried hitting the window with the food tray, but the wood refused to break and sent reverberations up his arms that, with the ache in his bones, almost drove him to tears.

After that, he took the tray, settled behind the door, and planned to smash it over the head of whoever came through the door next. He'd get their wand—his own had been taken—and flee, and hope he could get the cuffs off or escape better this time.

But hours passed, no one came, and the pain in his head and bones eased enough for him to fall into a doze. He woke hours later when the door finally opened, but by that point he was too out of it to wake quick enough to surprise his visitor. He could only scramble to his feet, almost falling as he forgot about his twisted ankle, and clutch his tray as Antonin Dolohov entered the room carrying another, this one with toast and jam and juice.

He paused, looking down at Harry, holding the first tray like a shield, and then looked over the uneaten soup and bread, and smiled faintly. He kicked the door shut behind him and set the new tray down on the desk.

"It's not poisoned," he said. "Even if the Dark Lord wanted you dead, he wouldn't do it by poisoning your food."

"There's other potions he could put in it," Harry said, not moving from his spot.

"True, but there aren't."

Antonin drew his wand and Harry tensed, but he just conjured a simple chair and sat down, stowing the wand again. He looked at Harry.

"Are you going to stay there all day?"

"What are you doing?"

"I want to talk with you."

"Is that Death Eater synonym for torture?"

Antonin laughed. "Well, maybe for some of them. People like Lucius and Bellatrix, but not me. My name's Antonin. I'm a scholar, nothing like those two. All I want to do is talk with you."

"Is that what you were sent to Azkaban for?" Harry asked dryly. "Talking to people?"

Antonin lifted his chin. "No. I was sent to Azkaban for killing and torturing countless people, or so the Ministry claim."

"How would you put it?" Harry asked incredulously.

"I performed experiments to determine the difference in resilience to magical attacks between magical and non-magical persons. I recorded all the results of my experiments, it's what got me caught. I'm scientist and a scholar. I didn't torture people out of sadistic pleasure."

"I'm sure your victims really appreciate that."

Antonin's lips quirked. Harry scowled.

"Never mind that," Antonin said. "I don't intend to discuss my experiments with you. I want to talk about history. I hear it's your favourite subject."

"Who told you that?"

"James Potter."

"James doesn't know anything about me," Harry spat.

"That's not true, though, is it? James knows quite a lot. He's acquired a great deal of information over the last year and he's spent most of the night passing it onto Lucius and the Dark Lord. The only parts I'm interested in, however, are the bits about you. If you don't want to discuss history, then how about yourself? I know it must have been difficult growing up thinking you were an orphan."

"You don't know anything about what it was like for me growing up."

"I know what it's like not to have parents. My mother died giving birth to me, and my father abandoned me in his grief. I was raised by my aunt and uncle, like you."

Harry scowled at him. "Is this where you tell me they beat you and we've got so much in common and should be best of friends?"

Antonin laughed. He had a nice laugh, and a nice voice. It annoyed Harry. Death Eaters weren't supposed to have nice voices and nice laughs.

"I don't think we'll be best friends, I know there are people who already claim that title. But we do have things in common and I think we can get along if you'll let us talk."

"Don't waste your breath. I can guess where this is going to go: you talk about the history of Muggle violence against witches and wizards, try to convince me that it's an excuse for wiping them out, get me to join your merry band of misfits?"

"Merry is not a word I would use to describe anyone who works for the Dark Lord."

"Save your breath. I'll never join him."

Antonin nodded. "You look tired. I'm guessing you didn't sleep much, if at all, last night. Eat your breakfast—" he drew his wand, pointed it at the tray, and Harry saw a slight haze as the toast reheated "—and get some rest, and I'll come back later."

"Don't bother."

Antonin stood up. He reached into his pocket again and Harry tensed, but all he pulled out was a book. He approached and Harry backed up until he hit the wall, but Antonin just got close enough to show him the book title, just one word spread across the front in large, faded cursive: _Nyneve_.

Harry sucked in a sharp breath. "Is that—?"

Antonin smiled that distressingly nice smile again and opened the front cover to show the sketch of a lady rising from a lake. Harry whined. Antonin put the book on the bed.

"You've no idea what it took to get Lucius to agree to lend you this, or to get Narcissa to let him visit the manor to fetch it, so be careful. I can't say what he'll do to you if you damage it, though I'm not sure he's ever actually read it himself. He just likes the prestige of owning it. Typical snob."

He left. Harry looked at the book, reached for it, stopped.

 _It's not like reading it means you agree to join them,_ the voice noted.

"You've been quiet," Harry said, not picking the book up, but not taking his eyes off it, either.

Nyneve's journal was mostly thought lost to the ages; some historians had spent their entire lives looking it. She was the mother of modern necromancy, vilified in more modern history texts for creation of inferi and numerous spells related to raising the dead, and the subject of controversy over her betrayal of Merlin, who'd been her mentor and lover until they fought and she turned him to stone. Most people believed she attacked Merlin because he tried to stop her plan to raise an undead army to take over all of Avalon, depose King Arthur, and take the crown for her self. A smaller group of historians believed that she'd never intended to take the throne, merely wanted to offer her services to the crown, and that Merlin turned on her from fear and jealousy of her power, and that Nyneve had merely defended herself.

And apparently Lucius Malfoy had been hoarding the one thing that might clear it all up.

 _You've been talking aloud to me lately. We don't need the whole world knowing about me, do we? Besides, I quite liked Antonin._

"That's disturbing," Harry said, honestly sickened that some part of him might like the man. "He tortured and killed people."

 _For science._

"That doesn't make it better. Anyway he was probably lying."

 _I'm sure he has some interesting things to say, regardless. Are you going to read it?_

"Yes," Harry said, because he'd never been able to resist a new history book. "But it doesn't mean I'm joining the Death Eaters," he added, not for the voice's benefit but just in case he was being monitored. Then he climbed onto the bed, settled down, and started to read.

* * *

Harry's Tripping Jinx was enough to exasperate the injuries from Yaxley's last attack on the Assistant, leaving him gasping for breath on the floor and struggling to get up when Voldemort yelled at them to catch Harry. Lucius, Bellatrix, and Antonin were already gone by the time he got to his feet, leaving him the unfortunate soul to face Voldemort's wrath.

That wrath didn't ease much when the Assistant explained why he'd been so easily taken down by a child's spell, but it at least found a new target. Voldemort was not pleased with Yaxley beating the Assistant into someone that could be so easily overwhelmed, and made sure Yaxley knew it.

The Assistant might have appreciated the intervention except Yaxley reacted exactly as the Assistant knew he would. Lucius might see James like a lovable pet, but Yaxley saw the Assistant as a toy, and not even a favourite one. For him, the Bond meant he could do as he liked with the Assistant and he didn't appreciate being told otherwise, even by Lord Voldemort.

As such, the Assistant wasn't overly surprised when, after being healed and spending the night in the hospital, Yaxley took him home the next morning, ordered him to remove his robe and get on his knees in their bedroom, and used a Whipping Hex on him until his back was a bloody mess. After, he grabbed the Assistant's hair and jerked his head back, uncaring of the tears staining his cheeks or the pained whine he gave.

"Don't ever, _ever_ , go over my head to the Dark Lord again," he hissed. "He might be lord of us both, but I am your Master and I will not be shown up like that, do you understand? I'll not have you acting like some whiny brat because you can't handle a bit of well-deserved discipline."

He shoved the Assistant down, standing over him with a disdainful sneer. "I have work to do. You can heal yourself if the Dark Lord summons you. Otherwise, you stay here. Understood?"

"Yes, Master."

"Good."

Yaxley stalked off to shower and dress, then left. The Assistant stayed where he was, closing his eyes and forcing himself to breathe through the pain.

He'd never realised how vicious Preston Yaxley could be; if the circumstances were different, he might have marvelled at how even after all this time he found out new things about people he'd known a thousand times before.

But then, interacting with him, the Assistant, was almost guaranteed to affect people, especially his Master. The power of the Animancupium often went to people's heads. It was a rare occasion that some Master didn't eventually resort to violence, especially as the kind of people inclined to do the ritual in the first place were the same sort inclined to violence.

He drifted into a doze, but was rudely woken not long after by the door crashing open. He snapped his eyes open and had just long enough to see Sirius Black throw something in the air, then pitch black darkness filled the room. The Assistant couldn't even see the carpet in front of his face.

He wriggled his fingers. He heard two thuds and grunts as Sirius and someone else—Remus, probably—crashed to the floor, then startled yelps as he conjured ropes to bind them, and a final flick of his fingers sent their wands clattering across the room.

Dispelling the darkness was a little trickier, but eventually he had it fading away, letting him see Sirius and Remus across the room, both struggling to get free of their bindings. They stopped when they realised they were visible, both staring at the Assistant.

"Hi," the Assistant said.

"What the fuck happened to you?" Sirius asked.

"I got a massage. How did you two find this place? No, wait, never mind, I know how. What did you actually hope to accomplish by coming here? I like you both well enough, but we're not exactly on visiting terms."

"You know where Harry and James are."

"Yes, I do."

"You can get them out."

"No, I can't."

There was a brief pause, then Sirius grumbled, "This plan was a lot better when we had our wands and weren't tied up."

The Assistant huffed a laugh, then groaned. "Don't do that. Look, this was very stupid and brave of you to come in here, but I can't help Harry or James anymore than I can help myself. I really don't know why you thought I would anyway. I'm a nasty evil Death Eater, remember?"

"We were planning to force you."

The Assistant laughed again. "Stop making me laugh, you bastard. It hurts."

"Did Voldemort do that to you?" Remus asked, nodding towards the Assistant's back.

"No."

"Yaxley?"

The Assistant nodded.

"Some boyfriend you've got," Sirius said.

"Boyfriend is not the term I would use."

"What would you call him?"

"Whatever he tells me to."

"You've got power equal to Harry's," Remus said. "Why don't you heal yourself? Why didn't you stop him doing it?"

"It's really not that simple, Remus. Now, unless you two actually have anything pertinent to say, I'd appreciate being left to suffer in peace."

He flicked his fingers and the ropes vanished. They cautiously got to their feet, eying him suspiciously.

"You know, for a guy who's caused us so much trouble, you're kind of pathetic," Sirius said.

"Bite me."

"I'll pass."

"We could heal you," Remus offered.

The Assistant smiled. "Kind of you to offer, but no. He'll only think I did it myself and do it all over again, and worse. Harry and James are fine for now, so sod off, the pair of you."

They both tensed. "For now?"

"Yes. James is happily licking Luci's boots, and Harry is being bribed with old books and chatting with Toni."

"Toni?"

"Antonin."

"Dolohov?" Sirius said. "That man is almost as vicious as my cousin!"

"True," the Assistant admitted, "but he's also a giant nerd. He and Harry should get along like a house on fire."

"Is this your effort at convincing us that everything's fine?" Sirius growled.

The Assistant sighed, shifted, grimaced. "This is my effort at making you go away. Look, the Dark Lord wants Harry working for him. He won't hurt him yet, you've got at least a week before they resort to torture, and they might not even do that. Toni is a philosophical genius, he's very good at talking people around to his point of view, it's what he does. He convinced me I didn't exist once, I was quite impressed, once I got over my existential crisis."

Sirius snarled, stalked forwards and made to kick him, but his foot hit a miniature brick wall that appeared and he stumbled back, cursing and limping.

"I can't fight Preston, but I can fight you, Sirius. Stop trying."

Sirius glared at him. "Harry will never work for Voldemort."

"Maybe, maybe not, but if he doesn't agree eventually then they will start torturing him, so if you're so sure he won't agree then I suggest you get out and start coming up with a _real_ plan to save him."

The Assistant waved his fingers and their wands floated back to them. Remus snatched up both of them and tugged Sirius away before he could try anything else and get himself hurt again.

"The Order can protect you when you decide you want to leave him," Remus said to the Assistant, who just smiled thinly and waggled his fingers in a goodbye wave.

* * *

Harry didn't like Antonin. He had a nice smile and a nice voice and all too often Harry found himself agreeing with what the man said about blood purity and how wizards deserved to rule over Muggles. It wasn't like listening to the Slytherins trash talking Muggles in the common room, spouting the ignorant refrains of their parents. Antonin argued his points and knew enough about Muggles and history to give his arguments weight. Faced with his careful and calmly presented opinions, the argument that Muggles were human and all humans deserved the same rights somehow felt a bit flat, and Harry hated him for it.

Harry's shackles had been split, the chain between them parted so that he could move more easily but still not do magic. He'd been given fresh robes, he got fed three times a day, and was put under a Cleansing Spell once a day. Antonin brought him more books, too. Nyneve's journal was a difficult read; he had to decipher her handwriting and then figure out the mix of Old English and Latin, the latter of which he needed a dictionary for. Thus far all he'd managed to decipher was that Nyneve's had lost a younger sister to Dragon Pox, had her first period at twelve years old, and wondered how menstrual blood could be used in blood and death magic. He wasn't sure he wanted to read more if she was going to keep talking about things like that.

For over a week, Antonin and an ancient house elf who delivered Harry's meals were the only people he saw. He caught glimpses of others in the hall when Antonin entered or left, but he was the only person Harry spoke to. He knew James was still in the hospital, but he hadn't been allowed to see him.

Then, exactly a week after they first kidnapped him, Voldemort entered the room with Bellatrix and an unfamiliar man with floppy brown hair and a disturbing sneer. Harry scrambled up from the bed, clutching Nyneve's journal tightly and backing away, glancing between the three.

Voldemort pulled a wand from his pocket and Harry swallowed as he saw it was his own.

"It appears that you and I share brother wands, Harry. Do you know what that means?"

Harry shook his head.

"It means that our wands share a core from the same source—a phoenix feather from the same bird. I had thought the strange occurrence the night you joined us was the result of your unusual magic, but it seems it's nothing so exotic."

He took the wand between both hands and snapped it clean in two. Harry made a pained noise, watching the pieces clatter to the floor.

"My patience has run out, Harry," Voldemort said. He drew his own wand and vanished Nyneve's journal, as well as the rest of the books. Harry couldn't help a cry of objection; that was untold history he'd been holding! "I will ask you only once, and then I will leave you to the attention of Bellatrix and Frederick. Will you join my ranks?"

Harry looked between the two Death Eaters. Bellatrix twirled her wand and giggled disturbingly. Frederick leered. Harry backed up a step.

 _I really think you ought to say yes,_ the voice said. _The alternative will not be pleasant._

"You murdered my mother," Harry said to Voldemort.

"And so you refuse to work for me?" Voldemort said.

 _You don't have to like the man, for god's sake. No one's asking you to forgive him. You don't even have to be loyal, just fake it long enough to get what we want. He'll torture and kill us if you refuse this._

'We don't even know if that will work,' Harry thought, biting his lip hard to keep from speaking aloud.

The voice, when it replied, was unusually soft. _We?_

"Answer me, Harry."

'I can't do this with you screaming at me and insulting me. You don't want to work for him really, I know you don't.'

 _You're right, of course,_ the voice sighed. _Very well. If you are decided…_

"I refuse," Harry said, speaking firmly even as he inched further back, hunching in on himself. "I won't join you."

… _then I will stand by you._

Voldemort didn't ask again. He pointed his wand and the dangling chains of Harry's shackles snapped back together, and then wrenched downwards and Harry crashed to the floor. One of the chain links stuck to the floorboards, keeping him from standing again.

"You still have a chance to change your mind," Voldemort said, "but there will be no more bribes or sweet words. Now you will join me, or suffer."

He turned and swept out. Bellatrix and Frederick smiled, and Harry could only cower at their approach.


	29. Chapter 29

**Chapter Warnings:** Rape and torture/violence.

 **Chapter 29**

For Severus, the last week of the school term was agony. He resorted to downing a shot or two of vodka every night to keep himself from doing something stupid, like stalking out the school and Apparating to the hospital to free his son. He took his bad mood out on the students and teachers alike, knowing he was causing talk as people wondered why he was so bothered by the mysterious disappearance of the Boy Who Lived, but he couldn't help it.

They knew where he was. The night Harry vanished, Black and Lupin turned up at Hogwarts to report that Harry and Potter hadn't made it back. Severus knew instantly where they were. The emerald pendant was the same temperature then as it was when Severus answered the Dark Lord's summons during the school term.

"Lucius," Black snarled when Severus reported it in Dumbledore's office, kicking a chair and running both hands through his hair. "That fucking bastard came for James again, and took Harry too."

"Or Potter's working with him," Severus had suggested, and got punched.

Severus still considered it a possibility, no matter what everyone else believed about Potter's innocence. He'd never been convinced that Potter escaped on his own, even if Lucius and Voldemort claimed otherwise. He knew his own trust within the ranks was still slightly suspect, even after his work this summer, and that titbit of information was something Voldemort would certainly keep close to the chest.

Dumbledore refused to let Severus go to Harry, and no one else could. Voldemort's hospital was as well protected against outsiders as Grimmauld Place was.

"He hasn't summoned you," Dumbledore said as Severus paced his office. "He's not expecting you until term ends. You'll only risk your position—"

"Fuck my position!" Severus yelled. "My son has been kidnapped—again!—and you want me to do _nothing_."

"Voldemort seeks to recruit him," Dumbledore said sternly. "He will not kill Harry yet, and you cannot walk in there and simply let Harry go. You will only get the both of you killed."

Severus snarled, stalked out, and went to find his vodka.

Finally term ended, with the Weasley twins setting off a motherlode of fireworks that rained the school with leaflets for their new shop in Diagon Alley. Only Flitwick's hand on his arm stopped Severus from setting them all on fire; Minerva looked as if she wanted to do the same thing. He knew she had a bottle of aged firewhisky in her office that she'd been saving for precisely this day. Under different circumstances, he'd have joined her in celebrating the final departure of Fred and George Weasley.

As it was, the moment the last carriage left the school grounds and the students were officially no longer his problem, he ran for his rooms to fetch his mask, tucking it into his pocket as he returned to the castle front doors. Most of the teachers were gone, and someone had done Filch the courtesy of clearing up the remaining Weasley Wizard Wheezes leaflets, but Dumbledore stood just outside the front doors.

"Be careful, Severus," he warned as Severus passed him. "Don't risk your position if Voldemort shows no sign of killing Harry."

Severus said nothing, just ran for the gate, pulled on his mask, and Disapparated.

The emerald pendant instantly grew hot against his chest when he appeared outside the hospital, and he put a hand over it, relishing the warmth piercing through his robes, then went to the small meeting room to give his usual end of year report. Voldemort asked for information from Hogwarts and on the Order, and wanted to know everything they knew or suspected about Harry and Potter's disappearance.

When he was done, Voldemort didn't immediately dismiss him.

"Remove your mask, Severus."

He did so, slipping it into his pocket.

"I'm sure that you've been wondering about the well-being of your son."

"No, my lord."

"No?"

"I care no more for him now than I did last year." The words made him feel sick, but sounded plausible. Lying was a skill he perfected a long time ago.

"Do you think I killed him?"

"No, my lord."

"Such a rapid response. Why so certain?"

"You wouldn't let his death go unnoticed," Severus said. "Even if you didn't want public acknowledgement that you did it yourself, you would still want everyone to know he was dead."

Voldemort laughed softly. "I forget sometimes how observant you are, Severus. How clever. You are right, of course. Tell me, does he know you belong to me?"

"He knows I am marked," Severus said slowly, cautious. "Like others he believes I am repentant, a spy for Dumbledore."

"So much for a child to know."

"His godfather would have him know everything. There was no keeping it from him."

"Then perhaps it's time he knew the truth."

Severus dared a glance up, but Voldemort's face was inscrutable.

"He's in the fourth bedroom on the left, on the top floor. You may see him."

"My lord, I don't care to—"

"Go see your son, Severus," Voldemort said, and Severus snapped his mouth shut. "Tell Lucius I wish to see him, and to bring Mr Potter."

He bowed, and turned to leave, only for Voldemort to call his name again.

"Keep your wand away from young Harry."

"You don't wish me to hurt him?" Severus asked, wary, uncertain. He could feel the tell-tale flicker in his mind of the Dark Lord reading his thoughts.

Voldemort waved a dismissive hand. "Hurt him if you wish, if it would convince him to join me, but keep your wand out of his reach."

So he knew about Harry's ability to cast wand magic even when chained. Severus covered his disappointment with confusion. "Is he not under magic restrictions, my lord?"

"It would seem those are effective only so long as he doesn't have a wand," Voldemort said, "which I'm sure you weren't aware of, or you would have told me."

"Of course, my lord. I'm stunned to hear it."

For a moment, neither spoke or moved. Severus focused on feelings of shock and surprise, hiding memories of Dumbledore's cuffs on Harry's wrists, not thinking of how they'd almost killed him.

He wasn't worried about that now. Voldemort would murder Harry long before any magic restraints could drain the life from him.

Voldemort turned away. "Go."

Severus left. Outside the meeting room he stopped, took a deep breath and let it out slow. This felt like a trap, but he had to go; Voldemort would hear if he didn't. He would just have to be careful about what he said and did.

He headed for the stairs, but paused along the way when he heard sounds from the common room. He peered through the partially open door before pushing it open and entering. Lucius sat around one of the tables with Bellatrix, Antonin, and Yaxley, playing cards. Potter sat at the other table, bent over a bit of parchment and writing with more intensity than most of Severus' students. He glanced over at Severus and they exchanged glares, then Potter flicked his gaze to Lucius before returning his attention to the parchment.

"Severus," Lucius greeted. "How nice to see you. How are things at Hogwarts?"

"If the Dark Lord hadn't forbidden it, I'd kill Madam Umbridge myself."

Bellatrix and Antonin shot him slight frowns. Yaxley smirked. Lucius didn't look up from his cards.

"I sympathise, but she is useful to our cause at least."

"The woman's not so bad," Yaxley countered. "You just need to know how to deal with her. I raise two seconds."

"Call," Antonin said. "Shouldn't she be gone from Hogwarts by now? The curse on the Defence position and all that?"

"So far she seems to have defeated it," Severus said with a grimace.

"Give it time," Yaxley said. "By law, the school year lasts from the first of September to the thirty-first of August. Something disastrous might happen over the summer."

"One hopes," Severus said. "Lucius, the Dark Lord wants to see you and Potter."

Lucius swore. "Time to wrap this up. What's the pot at?"

"Seven seconds," Antonin said.

"Then I raise three seconds," Lucius said, looking to Bellatrix.

"Call," she said, and looked to Yaxley. He glanced between the two, looked down at his cards, and sighed.

"Fold."

Antonin did the same. Bellatrix smiled. "Prepare to pay up, Lucius," she crowed, and laid down a straight flush.

Lucius sighed and stood. "The best player wins, of course."

Bellatrix drew her wand. "So glad you agree."

"As such, I hope you're prepared to pay, Bella," Lucius said, and laid down his own cards—a royal flush. He drew his wand. "Now will do, I think. Bella first?"

She snarled, but stowed her wand and moved away from the table. Severus stepped aside, clearing a space around her, and Lucius aimed his wand.

"Count from Severus," he said, and then: " _Crucio!_ "

Bellatrix went down screaming. Severus counted out thirteen long seconds, and then Lucius ended the curse, looking satisfied.

"Better luck next time," he said to Bellatrix, who glared up at him, but couldn't speak through her gasping breaths. "Who's next? Preston?"

"Seven seconds?" Severus asked as Preston moved forward with gritted teeth. Antonin confirmed and Severus counted it out as Lucius tortured Preston, then did the same for Antonin.

When it was done, Lucius stowed his wand, looking smug. "Come along, James."

Potter set down his quill and stood, obediently following Lucius out the room. Severus left the others clearing up the game and headed for the stairs, climbing them steadily despite an urge to run up them. There was no one in the upstairs corridor; Severus approached the fourth door on the left slowly, glancing around as he reached for the handle. He paused when he touched it, taking a deep breath to brace himself for what might be inside, then pushed it open.

His breath caught. The room was empty of furniture, leaving only Harry to draw Severus' attention. He was curled on the floor, wrists shackled, clothes gone. His skin was littered with bruises and cuts and—Severus swallowed down bile—a bite mark. He was clean of any fresh blood, but shivering all over, and when the door shut behind Severus he jerked his head up, looking around with terrified eyes. He didn't relax when he saw who it was, and that broke Severus' heart.

Severus went forwards, crouching by Harry, who pushed himself into a sitting position, knees tucked up to his chest. He flinched when Severus reached for him.

"I'm not going to hurt you."

"Help me," Harry begged. "Please. I'm sorry I was a brat to you, just please get us out of here."

"Don't apologise to me," Severus said, hating the sound of his voice. Then: "What do you mean 'us'?"

" _Please_."

"Harry, you said us. Who else is there?"

Harry shook his head. "No, you said he cared. You said."

"Said who cared? Harry, what are you talking—" He broke off with an angry sigh, remembering that Harry heard voices.

Harry didn't answer. He drew back, out of Severus' reach, and hooked his chained hands over his legs, hugging himself into a tighter ball. "You should go," he said in a quiet voice, dropping his gaze to his knees. "If he catches you here…"

"He said I could see you."

Harry glanced up, wary. "He wants you to torture me?"

"I don't know," Severus admitted. "But I won't. I will not hurt you, Harry."

"Even if he tells you to?"

Severus hesitated, looked around. Was it a trap? Even if it wasn't, the room was undoubtedly monitored. He hadn't seen the Assistant since he came in the house. If they heard him say something traitorous…

"It's okay," Harry said, resigned. "You have to do what he says. It's not like you ever cared for me anyway. Just… you're not allowed to use the Cruciatus. Only he does that, when he comes to ask if I'll join him. But it makes me seize and he doesn't want my mind to snap." He laughed then, a bitter noise that made Severus want to hug him. "As if it's not already."

"I will not torture you," he said, quiet but firm. "Not ever."

He drew his wand, and tried not to take it personally when Harry flinched. He waved it and conjured a simple robe straight onto Harry. He twitched as it settled onto him, but looked at Severus with gratitude.

Then he snatched Severus' wand away, pointed it at his face, and said, " _Stupefy_."

* * *

Harry pushed Snape's unconscious body aside, but before he could do anything else, Snape's wand leapt out of his fingers. It flew across the room and smacked into the suddenly appearing hand of the Assistant. His invisibility slipped away and Harry tensed, watching him warily, then couldn't help a flinch when the Assistant waved his hand, expecting pain. None came. Instead, Snape groaned, and Harry looked down to see him waking up. He blinked blearily a few times, then sat up abruptly.

"Harry!"

Harry glanced over at the Assistant and Snape whirled, got to his feet, stood between them.

"What now?" he said to the Assistant, who shrugged.

"Nothing. No, really. My orders were very clear. If you did or said anything that construed a betrayal, I was to lock you in a cage. If you tried to help him escape, I was to lock you in a cage. If you gave him your wand, I was to lock you in a cage. You did none of those things, so I've no orders to do anything to you."

He threw Snape's wand gently into the air and it floated across the distance to him. Snape grabbed it, instantly aiming it at the Assistant.

"I wouldn't bother. You can't hurt me, Severus."

"Why don't you help him when you have before?" Snape asked. "Or was this always your end game, to have him tortured to death instead of killed quickly?"

"I have my orders. I obey them," the Assistant said quietly, then cocked his head slightly, and said, "Bella is coming. You should probably leave now, Severus."

Harry cringed away, eyes going to the door. "Is Frederick—?" he asked, voice shamefully weak, scared.

"No," the Assistant said quietly. "He's got his favourite punching bag back, he'll probably not come by for a little while."

Snape spun, looking down at him. Harry couldn't meet his gaze. "Frederick Nott?"

Harry shrugged. He didn't know the man's last name, he just knew that he liked violence that left physical marks, even if it didn't make Harry scream like Bellatrix's spells did, and that he liked Harry to fight when he raped him. Harry didn't know who was worse. Bellatrix was viciously creative in finding ways to hurt him, in making him scream and beg for mercy even without resorting to the Cruciatus Curse, but there was something unspeakably awful about what Frederick did to him even when it hurt less.

"Son of a bitch," Snape said, voice trembling with anger. "I'll fucking kill him."

"That," said a voice just outside the room, "sounds like the words of a traitor."

The door swung open and Bellatrix stepped inside, smiling that crazy grin of hers, wand twirling between her fingers. Harry scrambled back until he hit the wall. Snape turned on her, barely getting a shield up in time to deflect the curse she threw. He retaliated with one of his own, and then they were duelling.

Harry had never seen a real duel before. He'd watched students lob spells at each other, but that was nothing like this. Snape and Bellatrix rarely spoke, spells coming silent and fast, sometimes jets of light, sometimes conjured and transfigured objects, sometimes nothing until a shimmer rippled through a shield charm.

Meanwhile the Assistant stood in the corner, watching it all and doing nothing except to catch Harry's eye and shake his head when Harry considered creeping around the duellers to the still open door.

Bellatrix went down suddenly, crumpling to the floor and dropping her wand. Her arms and legs bent in, her hands curled in at odd angles, her jaw clenched, and she twitched, apparently in pain but unable to scream. Harry could guess what was wrong with her because she'd done the same thing to him once—a spell that made all the muscles abruptly tighten. She'd never done it as long as Snape had, though, and judging by the wild look of panic and fear in her eyes, that was a good thing.

A spell flew through the door. Snape barely deflected it in time, and turned defensive as Antonin slipped through the door. Antonin cast a counter-curse on Bellatrix, but made no more attacks on Snape, just stood prepared to fight.

"Why haven't you caged him?" he asked the Assistant angrily. "You were ordered to stop him if he betrayed us."

The Assistant shrugged. "Duelling between us isn't treachery, it's just a bit of friendly rivalry, and Bella started it. He hasn't said or done anything questionable, nor has he tried to help Harry escape."

"He stands in our way," Bellatrix said, struggling to her feet on shaky legs. "He swore to kill one of our own. He's a traitor!"

"If Fred raped Cissy I'm sure you'd swear to kill him, too. You can't blame Severus for getting defensive about family."

"Wait, what?" Antonin said. "Family? To Harry?"

"He's the kid's dad, you idiot," Bellatrix said, shooting Antonin a disparaging look.

Antonin looked between Harry and Snape. "He—really? Don't look at me like that," he added when Snape and Bellatrix both rolled their eyes. "No one told me, how was I supposed to know? Someone could have mentioned this when I was talking to him, I could have done a better job convincing him if I'd known Snape was his dad instead of Potter."

"I still wouldn't have joined," Harry said quietly, then wished he hadn't when Antonin and Bellatrix both looked at him. Antonin hadn't hurt him—had in fact come once to heal him a little, presumably so Bellatrix and Frederick didn't kill him—but Harry had no trust for anyone with a Dark Mark on their arm.

Snape jerked his wand suddenly in a sweeping horizontal motion and the other three Death Eaters were knocked off their feet. He followed it through in a turn towards Harry and flung a spell at him, but a shield of blue burst up in front of Harry before it struck.

"I really wish you hadn't done that, Severus," the Assistant said, and then Snape was gently levitated into the corner where the bed used to be and a row of bars curved around in front of him, and his wand flew to the Assistant's hand. The others stood up, all except Harry.

"Fetch the Dark Lord," Bellatrix ordered Antonin, who left the room. Bellatrix went to the bars, grinning through at Snape. "I knew this day would come eventually. I'm going to enjoy punishing you, traitor."

She pointed her wand through the bars. " _Crucio_."

Snape went down screaming. Harry covered his ears, but it didn't help much.

"Enough, Bellatrix."

She stopped the curse and stepped aside as Voldemort entered the room. Snape stood up, looking out at Voldemort. Harry lowered his hands, wishing he could melt through the wall behind him. The constant ache in his head spiked, as it always did when Voldemort came in the room.

"James Potter told me you were telling Dumbledore more than I allowed, but I confess I'd hoped he was mistaken. I'm disappointed in you, Severus. Lucius was convinced you wouldn't risk yourself in a vain attempt to help your son."

"Lucius doesn't know me," Snape said.

"I don't think any of us know you or where your loyalties lie. Do you even know yourself?"

Snape said nothing. Voldemort didn't seem surprised, but it was so difficult to tell.

"You will watch your son kneel to me, Severus, or you will watch him die, and then you will pay for your treachery." He turned to Harry then. "Will you join me?"

"No," Harry said, cowering away from him. It did him no good.

" _Crucio_."

* * *

"I don't remember what it feels like," Harry said a day later. He lay with a blanket pulled over him, his shackles once again charmed to the floor. Snape was across the room, also lying on the floor with a blanket.

The Assistant had come by earlier with the blankets, and dispelled the cage, replacing it with shackles on Snape's wrists and ankles, with a chain from his ankles to the wall. It reduced him to a shuffle and forestalled any escape attempts, but left him able to reach the small bathroom connected to the room.

Not long after he'd left, Bellatrix came by. She put an Itching Hex on Harry and charmed his shackles, leaving him writhing on the floor, trying to scratch an itch that'd never go, while she put the Cruciatus Curse on Snape, mocking him between short bouts. Only when Harry was sobbing and screaming for mercy did she finally remove the hex and move onto to other tortures.

When she got bored of them, Antonin came by. He healed Harry's injuries but didn't do anything to take away the pain. He tried to talk to Harry like he had before, but Snape had snarled at him so viciously to go away that he left again.

And then, as always, Voldemort came by at sundown to ask if Harry was ready to join, and use the Cruciatus Curse when Harry said no.

"Don't remember what what feels like?" Snape asked, not bothering to look over at Harry. He was still twitching occasionally, curled on his side and hugging himself.

"The Cruciatus. I know that it's bad and I think my body remembers because I get really scared when he comes in, but I don't actually properly remember what it feels like 'cause of the seizures."

"Lucky you," Snape muttered.

"You know I said he's afraid of breaking my mind?"

"Mmm."

"He might not. He might fix it."

Snape finally opened his eyes to look at him. "What do you mean?"

"The voice in my head, it shuts up when he tortures me. Not the others, but when he uses the Cruciatus Curse. It's only for a little while though."

Snape shifted, grimaced. "You're still hearing that, then. Have you seen a psychologist yet?"

Harry gave him an incredulous look. "We're held prisoner and _that's_ what you want to scold me for?"

"I am in a great deal of pain," Snape said wearily. "Humour me. Have you?"

"No," Harry said. "And I'm not going to."

Snape made an irritable sound, but apparently didn't have the energy to argue further. "How long have you been hearing it? You said last February that it was a recent development. How recent?"

Harry turned his head up to stare at the ceiling, unable to lay on his back without uncomfortably twisting his arms. "Nearly two years now. Moody—Crouch, I mean—put the Imperius Curse on me, when he was training me for the first task. It started after that."

Snape's face twisted with anger. "Why didn't you tell me he did that? We could have arrested him then, we'd have found out who he was—"

"It was the day he died," Harry interrupted. "Anyway, he said Dumbledore gave him permission to do it."

"And you believed him?" Snape snarled. Harry didn't look at him. Snape's anger faded. "You do. You distrust Dumbledore that much?"

Harry shrugged. Snape sighed.

"What does this voice even say to you?"

"Stuff."

"Such as?"

 _He's a nosy bastard, isn't he?_

Harry passed that on.

"How polite," Snape drawled, then they both looked around as the door opened.

Harry whined, tugging at his chains. "No…"

Snape forced himself shakily to his feet, shuffling to stand in front of Harry. "Nott, if you lay a hand on him—"

"You'll do what?" Frederick Nott interrupted, grinning maliciously at them. "Snarl at me?"

He drew his wand, waved it, and Snape was wrenched away from Harry, slamming into the wall with a gasp and crumpling to the floor. The chain tied to his ankle shackles snaked up, dragging him into the corner, and then looped around his neck, tightening until he was gasping for breath, fingers clawing at it, not enough to kill him but enough to restrain.

"Be a good doggy, Snape, and sit quiet."

Harry shook, cowering back as Nott approached him, the shackles digging into his wrists as he tried to pull away. "No, no, no, he said you wouldn't be here…"

 _Are you surprised he lied?_ the voice muttered bitterly. _Everyone lies._

"Who told you that?" Frederick asked. Harry shook his head, flinched when Frederick reached for him and avoided the first grab, but then his hand was in Harry's hair, wrenching him up. "Who told you that, Evans?"

"The Assistant," Harry said quickly. "The Assistant, he said it, he said you had your favourite punching bag back."

"My favourite…?"

"Your son," Snape wheezed.

"Theodore?" Frederick laughed. "Oh, no, I don't use him as a punching bag. Don't get me wrong, I've had to discipline him a lot, because I'll not have it said I can't raise my own son properly, but I don't use him for frustration relief. What kind of monster do you think I am?"

He flicked his wand, Banishing Harry's blanket to the other side of the room, then scowled at seeing his robe. "Someone dressed you. Let me guess—Snape."

"You want to hurt someone then hurt me," Snape said. "Leave him alone."

Nott looked at him. "You'd do that? Let me hurt you instead?"

"Torture on Harry is restricted. I'm a traitor, you can do what you like to me."

Nott nodded. "That is true, yes. But you know what else is true?"

He waved his wand and Harry's robe vanished. He cried an objection. Nott kicked him in the gut, and Harry curled in on himself, wheezing. Nott stomped down on his shoulder and it popped out the socket, and Harry screamed.

"Leave him the fuck alone!"

"What's true is that I get off on the pain, and the fight. You know that, Snape. Everyone around here knows it. And what do you think causes more pain—torturing and raping you, or torturing and raping your brat while you have to watch and can't do anything to help?"

 _Don't fight,_ the voice said as Nott pushed Harry onto his front, kneeling over him with a knee either side of his hips. _Don't fight him. He likes it when you fight, just be quiet and take it._

Harry tried, but Nott began by putting his wand to Harry's back, flicking it like he was trying light a match, and Harry's flesh slashed open. Harry jerked and cried out, then forced himself not to as it happened again and again. He couldn't help twitching with each new cut, but he forced himself not to struggle and made no more noise than a whimper.

But then Nott bent down and bit him and he couldn't help twisting, trying to squirm away.

Nott laughed, spitting blood. "That's more like it!"

Hips ground against Harry's backside and he shuddered, but forced himself to do nothing more as the voice muttered, _Don't fight. Don't fight. Don't fight._

"What's that you're muttering?"

 _Don't fight, don't fight, don't fight._

"Don't fight? You just gonna lay there and let me get on with it? You know it's not rape if you want it, in which case I'll go call Preston. He's more discriminating than me—I'll take anyone but he only likes boys your age—but he likes them compliant. If you actually _want_ to get fucked, then I guess I should let him know."

Harry squeezed his eyes shut, tears of pain and shame spilling down his face, but did nothing else, just kept echoing the voice's mantra. A hand slid between his stomach and the floor.

"Nott, let him go!"

Nott laughed. "Why? He wants it, Snape. Is that right, Evans? You want this?"

A palm pressed to his belly then moved further down. Harry shook.

 _Don't fight, don't fight, don't fight—_

"No!" Harry cried, eyes snapping open, feeling tears spill down his cheeks. He struggled, bucked, tried to throw Nott off. "No, don't, don't, get off me!"

"Yes," Nott hissed. "Fight me."

Harry did. He couldn't stand to just lie there under Nott's heavy weight and get told he wanted the disgusting feeling of that man against him, the pain, the overwhelming sense of violation and helplessness. He had to fight because the alternative was worse.

Afterwards, he didn't even get the reprieve of being left alone. He pressed his face to the floor as Nott climbed off him and went to Snape, refusing to watch but unable to block his ears as Nott assaulted Snape. His goading didn't prompt Snape to fight like Harry, but he did something that made Snape scream.

When he finally left Harry glanced around to see Snape crumpled on the floor, curled in on himself, eyes squeezed shut and face twisted with pain. There was a smear of blood on his hip and more on the floor, but Harry couldn't tell where it came from.

Harry looked away again, not wanting to meet his gaze, and wondered if he should just give in and say yes.

* * *

Two weeks after they first took him, Voldemort didn't come, and instead of the old house elf bringing their food it was the Assistant. Another man accompanied him, a tall one with long greying blonde hair, who lingered in the doorway, arms folded over his chest. Preston Yaxley, Harry recognised from the _Daily Prophet_ report on the Azkaban escape. Snape tensed when they appeared, but he seemed more wary of Yaxley than of the Assistant.

Bellatrix had left Harry's shackles unstuck last time she visited, so Harry lay on the floor by one wall, a blanket pulled over him, saying nothing as the Assistant set down a tray with two bowls and two glasses then approached Snape. He was in worse condition than Harry, several bones broken, numerous wounds seeping blood, and suffering a perpetual shake from the Cruciatus Curse. He hadn't spoken in over a day and Harry had had to help him drink and drag himself to the bathroom.

Snape watched the Assistant approach, but didn't even have the energy to flinch from him when the Assistant laid a hand on his bare shoulder. For a moment nothing else happened, but then Snape gave a small sigh and Harry saw his injuries healing over. He grimaced at one point, twisting slightly, but then relaxed with a groan of relief, and the Assistant drew back. He conjured a robe straight onto Snape and floated over a bowl of soup and glass of water, helped Snape drink, then rose and came over to Harry.

Despite what he'd just witnessed, Harry flinched from him, tugging his blanket tighter, but when the Assistant touched him, it was just to cup his cheek. Like Snape, Harry's injuries healed up, taking some of the pain to leave him only the perpetual ache the Cruciatus Curse left in his bones.

When he was done, the Assistant sat back on his heels, letting Harry drink. Neither Harry or Snape touched the soup, though Snape hadn't eaten since Nott first attacked him, and Harry hadn't in a day.

When Harry set down his empty glass, the Assistant finally spoke.

"Harry, you need to say yes."

"I'm not a Death Eater."

"Harry, this is your last chance. His patience has run out. If you don't say yes, he'll—"

"Harry!"

Harry flicked his eyes over to Yaxley, but the Assistant flinched as if he'd been whipped and Harry realised Yaxley wasn't talking to him. He looked back to the Assistant.

"I can't tell you what he'll do," the Assistant said, "but it will break you, I promise you that. Say yes now."

"Why is he so insistent? Why does he want me so badly?"

The Assistant shook his head. "Honestly, by this point, he doesn't. I mean, he wants you in the ranks, but all the work he's going to now—that's not because he's desperate for you, it's because he wants you to break. It's not about getting you to work for him, it's just about getting you to change your mind."

"He wants to win," Snape said from the corner. Harry didn't look over.

"And he will," the Assistant said. "I promise you, Harry, he will win. You'll agree to work with him before sunrise, but if you do it now—before I leave this room—then it will be much better for you, it really will."

 _You said we wouldn't agree,_ the voice said when Harry hesitated to answer. Harry bit his lip to keep from answering it aloud.

'We don't know what he'll do to us.'

 _You'd change your mind then? Work for the man that killed your mother? That tortured you, let others torture you, let that man rape you? I will not allow you._

'It's not up to you.'

 _I am a part of you, I can make you. We should not bow to that man. You will not join him._

'Why? So we can be tortured more? So we can be raped again? I've had enough. I want it to stop. You wanted me to join him in the first place. To use him and then kill him.'

 _Then say it,_ the voice snarled. _If you really mean to join him, then say it now. Say yes._

Harry opened his mouth. "I'm not a Death Eater."

 _I thought so._

The Assistant sighed. "I'm sorry, Harry. I really am."

"We're going," Yaxley said, and the Assistant stood.

"I'm sorry," he said again and left.

Harry looked at Snape. "What's he going to do?"

"I don't know," Snape said quietly. "He's never courted anyone this long. Most people don't get to refuse him more than once, twice at most." He paused. When he spoke again, his voice was even softer and Harry had to strain to hear it. "If I had to guess, I'd say he'll probably kill your friends."

* * *

That night, Sirius and Remus were out of the house when they were attacked. With three days until the full moon, Remus was always glad to wear himself out; the wolfsbane gave him the mind of a man, but he still felt the wolf underneath and it didn't like being confined to the space of a single room, so tiring himself out before the change made it less restless.

Getting Sirius out of the house right then was even more important. He'd broken a lot of things in the past two weeks, bursts of anger at their inability to rescue Harry and James driving him to destruction. It didn't help that even three years after escaping Azkaban, he sometimes felt trapped when he was inside, irrationally afraid that the doors would lock on him and the Dementors would come. Working off some of that restless energy with a run through the forest would hopefully help at least a little.

Fighting Death Eaters definitely helped. They found a group of them outside the house when they got back, attempting and failing to break through the protective charms. Remus and Sirius couldn't get past them into the house, but Sirius didn't seem to care.

It was the first real battle they'd had during this war, all their previous work being in subterfuge and misinformation and recruitment. Remus had forgotten what it was like to fight like this, how difficult it could be exchanging spells and fighting for your life.

Sirius showed no sign of having any such problems. He physically assaulted people as much as he cursed them and he didn't seem to care that they were outnumbered three to one. If anything, he looked grimly pleased at finally getting to attack someone with abandon, releasing all his frustrations on their attackers.

It was inevitable they would lose, but it was Remus trying to call for help that lost them. He sent one Death Eater down with two broken kneecaps, and took a moment to send a Patronus message for help, thinking he was safe for that long, but then a curse hit him from behind. Purple flame flashed in the edges of his vision, hot pain burst through his back and chest, and the last thing he heard before he went crashing down was Sirius screaming his name.

* * *

In Oxford, Hermione lounged on her window seat, her lattice-work bay windows thrown open to feel the cool night air, and a book lay open but ignored on her lap. She watched a pair of bats flying around her garden, swooping and soaring, darting around the trees and over the eaves of the surrounding houses. Someone down the street had techno music turned up loud enough to reach her, and it was as if the bats danced to it.

When the cloaked, masked figure appeared in her back garden, she was so startled that she nearly didn't move. Only at the last minute did she dive away from the window, and the bolt of red light passed through the spot where she'd been and crashed into the ceiling. She heard a shout from down the hall in her parents' room, but she ignored it, scrambling to her feet and rushing for her bedside drawer, for her wand.

She never reached it. There was a crack, and the masked figure was suddenly in her bedroom. Her bedroom door burst open and she just had time to see her mother's shocked and terrified face, and then with a burst of red light and a bang, everything went dark.

* * *

In Kilnwick, a small village in East Yorkshire that homed a number of magical families, the Longbottom home was quiet and dark. Augusta Longbottom was a firm believer in 'early to bed, early to rise', and she had strict rules about her grandson waking her up during the night.

But the peace was broken when a wizard tried to sneak through the front door. Augusta's intruder alarms went off and the screech of a mermaid out of water rattled through the whole village. Augusta was out of her bed in an instant, snatching up her wand and dressing gown and rushing down to face the intruder. By the time Neville managed to pick himself up from the floor after falling out of his own bed, Augusta was already battling the intruder with more skill than anyone would have expected from an old lady.

In the end, it was luck that let the intruder win. Neville, eager to help, rushed down the stairs with his rope-bound copy of _Monster Book of Monsters_ , the thickest book he had. He intended to bang it over the head of the intruder. Unfortunately, he tripped at the bottom of the stairs, dropped the book into his grandmother's path, and she went crashing over. The intruder, deciding not to waste time getting into another fight, leapt over her, grabbed Neville about the throat, and Disapparated.

* * *

In Dobwalls, Cornwall, Eric Villiers was fast asleep and blissfully unaware that, down the hall, his son was wanking furiously to the _Playboy_ magazines he'd found in the abandoned schoolhouse where the local Muggle teenagers liked to hang out. Eric was a chronic insomniac and often resorted to strong sleeping potions to get through the night. He also didn't have any alarms on his home, not being skilled at such charms or familiar enough with the Muggle alternative. As such, he never even knew there was an intruder in the house.

Cid knew, because the intruder crept into his room just as he was reaching his peak. For a boy so prone to vulgarities, this was actually the first time he'd ever been caught with his pants down, and it was highly embarrassing.

"Wow," said the intruder, and Cid's embarrassment only got worse when he realised it was a woman. "Why didn't I get to kidnap one of the girls?"

"What? Wait, why are kidnapping me? My dad's got no money, you can't ransom me, and I'm not sure my mum'll pay up. She's really stingy."

"It's a good job I don't intend to ransom you then. For god's sake, pull up your pants, boy."

She waited until Cid yanked up his boxers and pyjama bottoms, and then said, "Thank you," and Stunned him.

* * *

In Bath, Tyler was home alone. This wasn't all that unusual, as Marcus worked strange hours, and at fifteen Tyler was old enough to be left alone for a night. When someone knocked on the front door, he ignored it, lounging in his bed watching a video about ninjas and snacking on Every Flavour Beans. He wasn't worried about intruders; Marcus had the best protections on a house that wizards could manage, including some that most people didn't know about. It was the advantage of running the Department of Mysteries.

Which meant that when his door swung open five minutes later and the Assistant stepped into his bedroom, he was so startled he could only gape at him.

"I'm not going to hurt you."

Tyler pointed. "You're that bloke from the paper. They said you helped all those Death Eaters break out of Azkaban. What are you doing here? How did you get in? Why didn't the alarms go off?" he asked, panic starting to overwhelm his shock. He scrambled to his feet, sending Every Flavour Beans flying, and wondered where his wand was in the mess littering his bedroom. "Mitzy!"

"There are very few places I can't get into. Your house certainly presented a challenge, but it wasn't impenetrable. Your house elf won't come, by the way."

"If you hurt her—!" Tyler cried, anger filtering through his fear. Mitzy had practically raised him since he was six.

"I just knocked her out, she'll be fine. I just needed her out of the way while I kidnap you."

Tyler's shoulders slumped. "I knew this day would come."

The Assistant blinked. "You did?"

Tyler nodded. "It was inevitable. Son of the head of the D.o.M? Some bad guy was bound to kidnap me eventually to get Marcus to give up his secrets or get them some secret weapon or something. If I come quietly do you promise not to hurt me?"

"I promise not to hurt you even if you don't come quietly."

Tyler thought about that. "That would be useful if my neighbours were close enough to hear me scream. Is there any point in me fighting?"

"No."

Tyler sighed. "Fine. Do I at least get held hostage somewhere nice?"

"Uh… well, it's nothing spectacular, but it's not a dungeon."

"Good enough, I suppose," he said, and crossed the room. When he was close enough, the Assistant took his arm—and Tyler rammed a knee into his groin.

"I'm not that fucking stupid," he said as the Assistant went to his knees with a thin, high pitched noise. Tyler shoved him aside and ran past, but then the air took the consistency of thick treacle, and he barely reached the stairs before the Assistant staggered up to him and grabbed both his arms this time, pulling them behind him and conjuring rope to bind his wrists.

"That," the Assistant said just before they Disapparated, "was totally uncalled for."

* * *

A whole team went to the Burrow. The fight there was difficult, but the Death Eaters expected it to be, had planned for it. Most of the people that went were nothing more than a diversion, attackers to keep Molly and Arthur and Bill distracted. Fred and George had an apartment in Diagon Alley above their shop and so, with only three of-age wizards to battle, it wasn't overly difficult for the extraction team to break into the house and find Ron and Ginny while the adults battled.

Ron, to his credit, did a good job at fighting off the men that came for them, and Ginny got one with a Bat-Bogey Hex, but in the end they were still just two children against cruel and skilled Death Eaters, and as soon as Antonin Dolohov had a firm grip on Ginny, he shouted the retreat and Disapparated.

* * *

Voldemort himself went to Malfoy Manor, with only Bellatrix to accompany him. Narcissa did a good job of hiding her fear, even when they told her they'd come for Draco. Draco couldn't hide his own fear so well, pale and shaking, and sighing with relief when they agreed to let Narcissa accompany him, but he went with his chin held high.


	30. Chapter 30

**Chapter 30**

It'd been full dark for a couple of hours when the door of the room opened again. For the last half hour, people had been screaming, enough different pitches and tones that Severus didn't think it was just the Death Eaters playing Crucio Poker.

Antonin and Bellatrix entered the room. Bellatrix hauled Severus to his feet, but Antonin approached Harry with his wand drawn. Harry cowered back and Severus made a weak attempt to break free from Bellatrix only to get a wand jabbed into his throat. He stopped fighting, mostly because he wasn't sure his legs would hold him up if he kept at it.

"Relax, traitor," Bellatrix said. "He won't hurt him. See?"

Sure enough, Antonin touched his wand to Harry's temple and said softly, " _Oblivate._ "

"He's making him forget that James Potter works for us," Bellatrix said quietly, so as not to disturb Antonin. If he lost concentration, he could completely destroy Harry's mind; it wouldn't take much given Harry's current mental state. "Your brat will think Potter's just as unhappy to be here as he is."

"What's to stop me telling him the truth?" Severus asked.

Bellatrix grinned. "We'll just do it again, and again, and again. How many Memory Charms do you think your crazy little boy can take, traitor?"

Not many.

* * *

Harry felt oddly dazed as Antonin pulled him out of the room and led him down through the hospital, but it faded and he could only assume he'd had a particular bad absence seizure.

The hospital seemed abnormally quiet now, no screams and no voices from behind doors. Harry hoped it just meant everyone was asleep, but knew it was a vain hope. They finally heard sounds when they reached the bottom floor, muffled shouts and sobs, faint thumps against the floor.

Bellatrix pushed open a large door and led them into a large, tall room that Harry couldn't guess the former purpose of. It was a single-storey offshoot from the hospital, skylights set into the sloped ceiling, tall windows in the far wall, a pair of French doors set into an adjacent wall. Two candle-filled chandeliers floated a few feet overhead, bathing the room in soft flickering light, enough for them to easily see all the occupants of the room.

Harry's aching legs gave out. "No!"

His friends and family, all of them, were in the room. Their wrists were bound behind them and cloths gagged their mouths, and they knelt in a row against the longest wall, Nagini the snake slithering in front of them like a guard.

Hermione was at one end, her face streaked with tears, shaking slightly. Next to her, Tyler shook even harder and look utterly terrified, but on his other side Remus was steady and calm, though he looked as ill as he did the day after a full moon. Ginny was next, a bruise on her forehead, and doing a good job at looking brave, but her freckles stood out starkly on her pale face.

Next to her, Sirius had a split lip and a furious look on his face that only faltered slightly when he saw Harry. Cid was next to him, as scared as Tyler but shaking less, with Neville beside him, an uncharacteristically hateful look on his face as he stared across at Bellatrix. On his left, James knelt with his shoulders hunched and face fearful, and Draco was on the end, angry and afraid and fixing his gaze on Harry.

Antonin hauled Harry back up and pulled him further into the room, then shoved him to the floor in front of Voldemort, before moving to stand with Bellatrix, who took Snape to one side and kicked his knee to send him to the floor, ordering him to keep quiet and still.

Sirius and Draco tried to move when they saw Harry, and Ginny and Hermione shouted through their gags, but an invisible force pulled Sirius and Draco back into position and Nagini hissed threateningly. Harry glanced around. The Assistant stood in one corner, wearing that cloak of his but with the hood pulled up for once, keep his face deep in shadow. Yaxley stood next to him.

"My patience has run out, Harry," Voldemort said. "I am going to ask you—one, two, three … seven, eight—eight more times if you will join my ranks. Every time you say no, I will kill one of our guests."

"No," Harry begged, his voice coming out a tremulous whisper. "Don't, please."

Voldemort ignored him. "I will begin with the Mudbloods and the animal, then the blood traitors, and then your unfortunate pureblood friends. I sincerely hope you do not make me kill them all. Lucius will be deeply upset if I have to kill his son and his pet."

Harry glanced around, saw the fear on his friends faces. James knelt hunched and miserable, and Harry wondered what he'd suffered these past two weeks as Lucius' 'pet'.

Tyler and Remus made sudden noises of surprise and slid across the floor, switching places. For a moment everyone looked at them, then Voldemort turned to the Assistant.

"I hope you have a good explanation for that bit of fanfare," he said in a dangerous voice.

"You wanted them in order of blood purity. Tyler's a half-blood, not Muggleborn, and not being a werewolf I assume he goes higher up the list."

"He's adopted," said Yaxley. "That means he's still a Mudblood."

"Not when his real dad's a pureblood."

Tyler made a shocked noise, struggling against his bonds, until Voldemort looked around. "Silence! You will join me, Harry."

Tyler went still, but when Voldemort's attention left him his gaze went back to the Assistant.

Harry got to his feet, shifting to stand between Voldemort and his friends. He heard Sirius trying to speak through the gag, but didn't know what he was trying to say.

"Just kill me. Leave them alone."

 _Hang on, what are you doing? We don't want to die._

"Such nobility," Voldemort sneered. "You certainly get that from your mother."

"Kill me. Let them go. Please."

 _Look, enough is enough. I stood by you when they tortured you, but honestly I thought you'd give in before they killed you. Suffering is one thing, but we're doomed to die soon enough as it is, don't go getting killed any earlier. Just say yes!_

Voldemort raised his wand. There was a torrent of muffled shouts behind Harry and he didn't want to know what they were saying, just stood firm before Voldemort, unflinching.

And then Voldemort's wand shifted. " _Avada Kedavra!_ "

Harry darted to his right, but he was too slow—the bolt of green light rushed past him—Hermione's terrified face was lit up—

—then Remus slammed into her and they both went crashing to the floor. Harry stared, hardly breathing, knowing one of them was dead and too scared to find out which.

Hermione shifted, sat up, sobbed. Remus fell limply aside.

Sirius screamed, the noise barely muffled by his gag. James shut his eyes and bent over until his forehead touched the floor. Harry's knees gave way and he dropped, staring at Remus. The others were all crying, tears of fear and shock as much as sadness.

Bellatrix laughed. Sirius roared with anger and surged to his feet, actually getting a few steps forward before the Assistant forced him back down again. He struggled against the pressure even when it pushed him flat to the floor, squirming like a trapped eel.

"Harry," Voldemort said, "will you join me?"

"Yes."

His voice was a whisper, but everyone seemed to hear it because they all went quiet. Even Sirius stopped struggling, and James sat up again, opening his eyes. Harry didn't move, staring at Remus' body, barely feeling the tears running down his face.

"Say that again. Louder."

"Yes. I'll join you." He twisted, looking up at Voldemort, whose red eyes gleamed with triumph. "But you let them go. You let them go unharmed and make them forget what happened here."

"Altered, but not forgotten. It will do me no good for the world to know you bow to me anyway."

Harry hesitated a moment, then nodded.

"Then move aside."

Harry stood up, but that was all. "You said you'd leave them unharmed."

"And I will. Move aside. Stand with Antonin."

Harry glanced behind him, hesitant.

 _Don't be stupid, just do as he says._

"Harry, my Death Eaters obey me," Voldemort warned. "Without question."

"I'm not marked yet," Harry pointed out.

"Would you like me to kill another one? I won't miss the Mudblood this time."

Hermione whimpered faintly.

Harry hesitated a moment longer, then moved to stand with Antonin. Voldemort raised his wand, aiming it at Hermione, and Antonin grabbed Harry, holding him back.

"What are you doing, you promised!"

Voldemort ignored him. He moved his wand in a left facing arrowhead, said, " _Verba mea mortiferæ_ Harry Evans stands against Lord Voldemort," and then drew a right facing arrowhead.

Draco and Sirius gasped, and Snape closed his eyes with a regretful look. Hermione whimpered again and a red light burst out of her, shrouding her for a moment and making her back arch, almost lifting her off the floor, then it sank into her and she slumped.

"What was that, what did you do?" Harry demanded. "Answer me!"

Voldemort spun, flicked his wand, and Harry staggered against Antonin, gagging, suddenly feeling like there was a rock in his throat.

"You do not demand anything of me, Harry Evans," Voldemort snarled. "Do you understand?"

Harry nodded desperately, grasping at his throat, and the sensation vanished. He gasped, coughed, looked up at Voldemort fearfully. Seemingly satisfied, Voldemort turned back and cast the same spell that he used on Hermione on the rest of the prisoners, all except Draco and James.

"Now, who would like to tell Harry what I have just done? Anyone? Dear me, what are they teaching you at Hogwarts these days?"

Draco made a muffled noise. Voldemort flicked his wand and the gag in his mouth vanished. Draco wet his lips, glanced around the room, and eventually settled his gaze on Harry with an apologetic look.

"It's called a Word of Death Curse. If he says those words again, with intention, then they…"

Draco trailed off. Snape finished for him.

"They die."

Hermione sobbed. Ginny, Tyler, and Cid made noises of objection behind their gags. Neville whimpered. Sirius didn't react at all; he was staring at Remus' body.

Voldemort turned to Harry. "This is to ensure that you do not betray me like your father did."

All his friends except Draco looked at James, who stared at the wall. Draco's brow furrowed, then his gaze darted from Harry to Snape and back again, and his eyes widened.

"Turn on me," Voldemort continued, "and they all die. You will not act against me, you will not attack my other followers, you will not take revenge for what's been done to you. I spared Draco and James for Lucius' sake, not yours, but make no mistake that if you push me I will kill them to punish you too."

 _So much for that plan,_ the voice murmured. _Still, if you kill him quickly…_

Harry nodded, shaking with fury that he didn't let show on his face, hoping the fresh tears filling his eyes would be taken as misery instead of anger. He couldn't take the voice's suggestion; for all he knew, the curse had a failsafe that would kill them all if Voldemort died. Until he knew more, he couldn't act against Voldemort.

"Bellatrix, fetch Lucius and your sister."

Bellatrix kicked Snape in the side, hard enough to knock him over and leave him wheezing, and then left the room. Snape struggled back up to his knees.

"When you take those chains off," he said, coughing slightly, "there will be an outburst of magic."

Everyone looked at him. Snape's gaze was fixed on Voldemort.

"His magic is volatile. He's not that bastard—" he jerked his head towards the Assistant "—and he's liable to lash out unintentionally at Nott and Bellatrix."

"Is there a point to this, Severus?"

"I realise I'm going to die very soon, but I would appreciate it if you didn't murder half the room because of something he can't control."

"So you create this weak story to try and excuse his inevitable assault of my other followers?"

"It's not a story," Draco said, and then cringed when Voldemort turned to him. He glanced up, down again, then forced himself to look back up and say, "It's true he can't control it. I've seen it."

"Is that so," Voldemort said, his tone cold enough that Draco said nothing else.

Bellatrix returned with Lucius and Narcissa. They looked immediately to Draco, and Narcissa couldn't keep the obvious relief off her face at seeing him alive.

"Let's begin," Voldemort said impatiently. "Harry, come forwards."

Antonin let go of Harry and he stepped forwards. He pushed up his left sleeve when ordered, a little awkward with his wrists still shackled, but he got it far enough so Voldemort could touch his wand to his bare forearm. He kept his gaze on his arm when Voldemort cast the spell, so he wouldn't have to see the expressions on his friends' faces, and grit his teeth against the pain of the Dark Mark branding into his skin. It burned, but it wasn't as bad as what Bellatrix and Nott had done to him over the past week.

"Remember—betray me, and they die."

Harry let his sleeve fall down and bowed his head. "Yes… my lord."

Voldemort's expression was one of pure satisfaction. He tapped his wand to the chains and the shackles clicked open. Even before they hit the floor, the windows burst out and the candles in the chandelier flared, and Bellatrix suddenly crashed into the floor as if a piano had fallen on her. Lucius, Antonin, and Yaxley went for their wands, but stopped when Voldemort lifted a hand. Harry hurriedly fixed the windows, looking warily between Voldemort and Bellatrix. If Voldemort even started to say the words from the Word of Death Curse, Harry would kill him and hope it didn't kill his friends as well.

"You little bastard," Bellatrix groaned, unsteadily pushing herself up. She had to stop when she got to her hands and knees, closing her eyes with a grimace. There was blood in her hair. She groaned again, then forced her head up to glare at Harry. "Treacherous little shit… just like your worthless father…"

"Enough, Bellatrix," Voldemort said. "Young Harry's actions were accidental. Severus warned us of this."

"Accidental? He tried to kill—"

"Are you questioning me?"

Bellatrix faltered. "No, my lord."

Voldemort accepted that and turned to Harry. Bellatrix glared at Harry, but then sat back to lean against the wall, tentatively probing at her head and wincing.

"You will prove your loyalty to me now, Harry," Voldemort said. "Kill the traitor."

The air in the room seemed to thicken. Sirius struggled back to his knees; Snape stiffened; Narcissa's eyes widened; Bellatrix grinned, though it came out more of a grimace; and the Assistant shifted. Harry swallowed thickly.

"You needn't use the Killing Curse if you don't feel capable," Voldemort said, like he was granting a mercy. "As long as he dies, I do not care how. If it is painful, all the better, and as he has been a poor father to you—"

There were shocked noises from Harry's friends.

"—I see no reason you should have any difficulty harming him."

"You broke my wand."

"We both know you don't need it."

Harry swallowed.

In the corner of the room, the Assistant shook slightly, and Yaxley reached up and wrenched his hood back, leaning in to whisper in his ear. Whatever he said made the Assistant grimace. Yaxley whispered something more to him, and he cried out, dropped to his knees, and placed both hands flat on the floor. He still shook, but he was crying silently now and Yaxley looked satisfied.

"Kill Severus," Voldemort ordered.

Harry turned to Snape, clenching and unclenching his hands. He was suddenly remembering every good thing Snape had ever done for him, struggling to find the hatred he'd carried for so long. Snape looked back at him, unafraid and unflinching. Accepting, even.

"Perhaps a little incentive is in order."

"No! No, I'm doing it—"

Voldemort bent, putting his mouth to Harry's ear. Harry twitched, wanting to jerk away, and then heard a Parseltongue whisper: " _He was the one to tell me of the prophecy all those years ago._ "

Harry's eyes went wide.

" _Had he not, I never would have tried to kill you, and your mother never would have died._ "

The candles flared, the walls and floor creaked and groaned threateningly, the windows broke again, and Snape hurtled into the air, body arching, and screamed.

Voldemort straightened up, a satisfied look on his face as he watched Snape. Bellatrix laughed, Antonin and Lucius gave Harry considering looks, and Narcissa stared at the floor. Harry's friends looked horrified; Hermione started crying again, Tyler hunched his shoulders like he was trying to cover his ears, Cid, Neville, and Ginny all turned their eyes to the floor, and Draco stared at Harry.

Then Harry realised what he was doing and Snape dropped. He hit the floor with a gasp, then groaned.

"That was impressive, Harry," Voldemort said, and Harry hated the admiration in his tone. "I knew you would be an asset to my ranks when you finally joined. Would you like to torture him some more, or will you kill him now?"

Harry turned away, made a Wish, and heard Snape exhale one last time.

* * *

Antonin pulled Harry aside to tell him what he needed to know and how to act when he was summoned to Voldemort in future. As he did, Lucius spoke briefly to James, who turned his head away, then at Voldemort's acquiescence took Narcissa and Draco out the room. As the family left, Draco tried to catch Harry's eye, but Harry avoided looking at him.

Voldemort altered the prisoners' memories so they believed Harry had refused to join the Death Eaters, but had agreed to stand down from the war. They would think Voldemort put the Word of Death Curse on them to ensure Harry kept his word, and believed Voldemort was the one to kill Snape. He Stunned them after, then spoke briefly to Yaxley and the Assistant before calling Nagini and sweeping out the room.

Bellatrix got to her feet, hissed at Harry, "I'll get you for this, halfie," and left as well, then Antonin finished giving his instructions and followed her out.

The Assistant stood, wiped the tears from his face, and approached Harry. He took Snape's ebony wand from his pocket and held it out, and when Harry reached for it he grabbed Harry's hand, holding it in both of his own.

"I'm sorry about Severus," he said quietly, and sounded like he meant it.

He said something else then, but Harry must have had another absence seizure because he blinked and suddenly the Assistant was pulling away and saying, "You can take him with you. Bury him. I'll see you around."

He left him holding the wand, and then Yaxley stalked forwards and grabbed his arm. He pointed at a rope lying by Harry's unconscious friends.

"That'll take you to Hogsmeade in sixty seconds. Don't forget where your loyalties lie now."

Harry said nothing, just looked at the pile of unconscious bodies in front of him, and the two dead ones, and fought the urge to break down into tears. He Wished for the rope to gently wrap around the wrist of each of them, then moved forward to crouch and lay his own hand on it. He felt the wrench of it pull at his stomach, but as soon as the whirl of colour and howling wind vanished, he took one glimpse at the village of Hogsmeade and then collapsed.

When he woke, he was in Saint Mungo's, his friends had gone home, and Snape and Remus were in the morgue. He still felt a lingering ache in his bones, but he was in less pain than he had been in a week, even the throbbing in his head finally gone for the first time in a fortnight. Sirius and James were in the room with him, sat morosely in chairs by the bed. Dumbledore came by not long after Harry woke, and the first thing Harry asked about was the Word of Death Curse.

"It cannot be broken or removed," Dumbledore told him solemnly.

"I could make him forget he put it on them," Harry suggested. "I can do memory charms from a distance."

Dumbledore shook his head. "He would wonder why he kidnapped you and your friends but did not kill you. He would only attack again, and this time he might just kill you, not kidnap you. For now, you're safe so long as he believes you take no part in the war."

"I can kill him," Harry said.

"You cannot. Voldemort has protected himself from death in ways even you cannot defeat."

"You don't know that!" Harry cried. "You don't know how powerful I am."

"I know how powerful Voldemort is," Dumbledore countered sharply. "If you attempt to kill him, he will only revert to the same spirit form as he was before his resurrection."

"That's better than what he is right now!"

"It will not stop him enacting the Word of Death Curse. It will not stop his Death Eaters and it will not end this war. Right now, his people are controlled by him and follow his orders. Without him, they would attack with abandon, and they would soon resurrect their master. He will not stay down for another thirteen years. Harry, I am sorry, I understand your feelings, but right now the safest course of action is for you to let the Order fight this war."

"What about the prophecy? It said I'm the one to kill him and you expect me to just sit back and do nothing?"

"If you don't, Sirius, me, and all your friends die," James pointed out.

For a moment, Harry stared at him, feeling an inexplicable urge to curse him right through the stonework, then his words penetrated and he sagged. He was right. Seven people's lives depended on Harry's actions.

"One day Voldemort will be vulnerable," Dumbledore said. "When that day comes, I will call on you."

Harry looked up with angry tears stinging his eyes. "Do you honestly really think the best thing for me to do is to not interfere with the Word of Death Curse?"

"I do."

"Why should I trust that? Why should I trust _you_?"

"Harry," Sirius said. "It's Dumbledore."

"Exactly. You've never given me reason to trust you. Why should I now?"

"I've learned from my mistakes," Dumbledore said quietly. "Especially with regards to you. Your actions right now risk more than just your own life. I would not advise you poorly with this."

Harry stared at him, trying to decide what to do. He didn't trust the man, no matter what he said, and he wanted to do whatever he could to save his friends and Sirius and James… but he was also terrified that Dumbledore was right and one wrong move on his part could end up with his friends dead. Was it worth the risk?

No.

Fists clenching in his lap, he looked down. "Fine. I won't do anything."

"We will defeat him," Dumbledore promised.

"Just do it quickly."

"We will. For now, I'd like to hear your recounting of the past two—"

"No."

"Pardon?"

Harry looked up with a glare. "You heard me. You obviously already know all about what happened. You don't need to hear it from me."

"I know what happened last night," Dumbledore said. "But I know nothing of what happened before then."

Harry glanced at James, who looked down, abashed.

"I can't remember anything before last night. They complete erased my memory. I don't even remember getting kidnapped."

"Why would they do that?"

James said nothing, just rubbed at his collarbone. Sirius' jaw clenched angrily.

"Whatever the reason," Dumbledore said, "it means only you can tell us what's happened in the past two weeks."

Harry looked away from James. "I was locked in a room getting tortured, that's all I can tell you. I never saw James, I don't know what he was doing."

"Harry—"

"No," Harry snarled. "They tortured me, and when I wouldn't do what he wanted, he kidnapped my friends. That's all you need to know."

Dumbledore looked as if he might push it, but he must have realised Harry wouldn't shift on this. He nodded. "Very well. Get some rest, Harry. I'm glad you're back."

He went to leave, but Harry called him back, recalling something.

"There is one thing I'll tell you," he said. "The Assistant's real name is Harry."

Something like surprise and satisfaction flashed in Dumbledore's eyes, and he nodded. "Thank you."

Not much later, Kirith came by. She wanted to keep Harry for the day and a night, just for observation, but the Assistant's healing earlier had fixed most of the damage from the torture—he had only the scars from days before—so she had no real reason to insist he stay, and she reluctantly let him go.

At home, he left Sirius and James in the living room and went up to the bathroom. He showered for half an hour, scrubbing his skin until it was red and raw, but still felt unclean. He climbed out, dried off and dressed, and changed his non-magical prosthetic for the blue eye.

Then he climbed into bed, hugged Kiwi tightly to his chest, and sobbed.

* * *

Draco spent some time talking with his father, but never once asked about what had happened to Harry over the past two weeks. Lucius only brought him up once, and Draco just said firmly, "I'm not talking about him," and Lucius agreed with a satisfied little smile. He probably thought Draco blamed Harry for his getting kidnapped, threatened with death, and having to watch two people die right in front of him, which just went to show that Lucius knew very little about his son.

When Draco returned home with his mother, Narcissa hugged him in the entry hall, holding firm for a long time before kissing his hair and suggesting he get some rest. Draco kissed her cheek, went up to his room, and ordered Dobby to make him some hot cocoa then went to shower. When he was done, he dressed for bed, took the steaming hot drink waiting for him, and tried very hard not to think about anything as he drank it. After, he slept, and it was past midday when he woke again.

He found his mother having lunch in the conservatory and joined her. They didn't talk as they ate and Draco relaxed in the sun and the warmth, but when they finished and Dobby took away their plates, Draco turned to Narcissa and said, "I'm going to see Harry."

Narcissa still had a cup and she lowered it to the saucer with a small clink. "Draco—"

"I don't blame him, Mother. I don't hate him for what happened. I have to see him so I can tell him that."

"Can't you just write him a letter?"

He shook his head. "It's not enough. His other friends will abandon him now—they'll hate him for what happened, and they think he's turned his back on the war so they'll abandon him for no longer being their saviour. I can't let him think I'm abandoning him too. I need to show him that I won't."

"He swore himself to the Dark Lord. It's not an easy thing, Draco," she warned, "being the lover of a Death Eater. Their loyalty to the Dark Lord will always come first, and I gather that Harry will not risk his friends' lives again. The Dark Lord has to be the most important person in his life now. Can you handle that?"

"I love him," Draco said firmly.

"I loved your father, too. A part of me still does. That doesn't make it any easier."

"But you tried. You didn't get divorced because Father was loyal to the Dark Lord, you got divorced because he lied to you. Harry needs someone to support him and right now I'm probably the only person that will do that."

"He has his godfather and James Potter."

"That's not the same as a friend, and Mr Potter is only there to spy on Harry anyway."

"You cannot tell him that, Draco," Narcissa said sharply. "The Dark Lord granted you a mercy letting you keep your memories, but if you reveal that Potter isn't under the Word of Death Curse or that the Dark Lord is using him then you'll be killed no matter whose son you are."

"I won't," Draco said, though he didn't like keeping secrets from Harry. "I'm not going to get myself killed, Mother, but I have to see Harry."

She sighed. "Do you even know where they live? How will you get there? How will you convince my cousin to even let you in?"

Draco faltered at that, then said, "I'll fly there, and I'll stand on the front porch until they let me in."

"You'll do no such thing," Narcissa said sharply. "Anyone could see you. No, absolutely not. I forbid it, Draco."

"Then I'll take the Knight Bus. I'm going, Mother," he insisted stubbornly, getting to his feet. "One way or another."

"Then I will Apparate you."

"Mother!"

She stood, looking imperiously at him. Even though he was the same height as her now, that look still managed to make him feel three feet tall. "It is not safe out there, and quite frankly I don't trust Sirius not to curse you off the front doorstep. If you insist on going, then I will take you myself, or I will lock you in your bedroom."

"I'm too old for timeouts, Mother," he grumbled.

"Not until you can break the locking charms on your door without getting expelled, you're not. I need to change my robes if we're going out. I'll meet you by the front door."

* * *

The Assistant was curled in the armchair in Yaxley's bedroom room, feet tucked under him and chin resting morosely on his fist, staring at nothing. He didn't look around when Yaxley entered.

"Are you still sulking?"

The Assistant said nothing.

"You realise Severus didn't even like you. He thought you were impudent and annoying."

"I am impudent and annoying. It's part of my charm."

"It's the reason people like to torture you so much."

"Including you?"

"Especially me. Come to bed."

"No."

A pause, then Yaxley moved to stand before him. "Are you disobeying me?"

The Assistant looked up. "I am not playing your games today, and you won't fuck me as I am."

"You'll do as you're told."

"If you force me, because we both know you've figured out what my Trigger is. But I will fight you every inch that I can today, and tomorrow, and every day after, because aside from the fact that you're just not a good shag, I do not like you and I do not enjoy pretending to be a teenager. It's fucked up."

"Bad?" Yaxley repeated furiously, and the Assistant sighed because of course he would fixate on that.

"Yes, bad. You've no finesse, no skill, and quite frankly if we weren't Bonded I doubt I would even orgasm." Yaxley looked more angry with every word, so the Assistant went on. "My first time was better than any shag I've ever had with you, and that was with another virgin in an abandoned classroom at Hogwarts and it lasted about two minutes, if that." He paused to gauge Yaxley's fury, then went for the kill shot. "Hell, sex with Bellatrix is—"

Yaxley hit him, a solid backhand slap that almost knocked him over the side of the chair. He grabbed the shoulders of his robes and pulled him off, throwing him down on the floor, and then yanked out his wand and threw a Cruciatus Curse at him.

Comparing Yaxley unfavourably to any woman was guaranteed to piss him off, but Bellatrix was an especial sore spot. He hated that Voldemort favoured a mad woman over him, that she was considered more loyal for going to Azkaban back in the early '80s, while Yaxley spent that time collecting information from his work in the Department of Magical Law enforcement before his own arrest last year.

Mostly, though, he just hated that she consistently proved herself more magically skilled than Yaxley could ever be.

When it stopped, the Assistant twisted his head to look around, and said, "Even Bellatrix with a dildo is better than you."

He saw the familiar flick of Yaxley's wand and flinched even before the sensation of a whip hit him. His clothes vanished and he curled up, arms protecting his head as lashes came down on him again and again. He held out from screaming as long as he could until the pain became too much, but he never begged.

When it stopped, he lay whimpering, blood dripping over his skin. He felt as much as heard Yaxley move to stand over him.

"Do you have anything else you'd like to say?"

Shifting his arms and grimacing, the Assistant looked up and said, "If it makes you feel better, you're not as bad as the Dark Lord."

Yaxley had raised his wand at the first few words, intending to curse him again, but then he stopped. "You haven't."

The Assistant attempted to grin, knew it came out more of a grimace. "I have. Not the one you know and love, but I have and he's not the kind of guy that changes through the timelines, y'know? One Voldemort is just like any other."

Yaxley stared at him a moment longer, apparently uncertain whether to believe him or not, then jerked his wand down. A force not unlike a giant slamming their fist crashed into the Assistant. The floorboards under the carpet cracked, the air rushed out of his lungs, and he felt several bones break. He lost consciousness momentarily and when he came back round Yaxley was crouched by him. The Assistant couldn't move, couldn't breathe properly. Every weak gasp sent a stabbing pain through his chest and blood bubbled in his mouth.

"You are a disrespectful, treacherous piece of shit, and I ought to kill you."

If he didn't give the Assistant permission to heal himself, he would. He'd ordered the Assistant to never heal any injury inflicted by him, an order he'd never retracted.

"You would have saved Severus Snape last night, wouldn't you?"

When the Assistant didn't answer, Yaxley put his wand under his chin, tilting his head. The room spun.

"Answer me, Harry."

The Assistant tried, compelled to, but all that came out was a groan, blood spilling between his lips. Yaxley drew back.

"Heal yourself," he ordered.

Bones snapped painfully into position, torn flesh knitted itself back together, the hole in his lungs sealed up. He coughed, had to give his lungs a stab of magic to force out the blood, clearing them until he could breathe and then vomiting. When it was done, he lay weak and dizzy among the mess.

Yaxley stood, looking down at him disdainfully.

"You will never act against the Dark Lord, Harry. We are Death Eaters, and you will be loyal to the cause. You will obey his orders and mine. You will not exploit any loopholes you perceive in your orders. Have I made myself clear?"

"Perfectly, Master," the Assistant said, quiet, respectful, as close to submissive as he ever got.

"Good. Clear up this mess, get in the shower, then come to bed."

* * *

Harry was still in his bed when the knock at the front door came. He swivelled his eye towards it, gasped, sat up, then stopped. Why was Draco here, and with his mother? Narcissa didn't look comfortable, hand clasping her thin summer cloak tightly around her. Draco looked uncertain too. Were they here willingly? What for? Was it some kind of ploy? Was Voldemort—or Lucius—testing him in some way?

He glanced aside, saw James get up from the sofa and head for the hall. Harry scrambled out of bed, leaving Kiwi and rushing downstairs. He wasn't sure what Draco and Narcissa wanted, but letting James confront them would not be good, and Sirius wouldn't be any better.

Harry got to the front hall at the same time James opened the door, and stumbled to a stop at the base of the stairs.

"Ms Black," James greeted in surprise. "Mr Malfoy."

There was a snarl from the living room, then Sirius crashed through the door. Harry leapt forward, grabbing his wand arm and hauling him back.

"Sirius, no!"

He clung on tightly as Sirius tried to throw him off. "Get off, Harry, this bitch—"

"Don't speak about my mother like that!"

James looked around. "Sirius," he said, quiet but enough to make Sirius stop fighting Harry. He held Sirius' gaze for a moment then looked back to Narcissa and Draco, and bowed his head respectfully. "How can we help you today?"

Draco looked around at his mother with a thoroughly startled expression. Narcissa took it in her stride.

"My son wished to visit Harry."

"Like hell," Sirius snarled, wrenching himself free of Harry and stalking forwards, shoving James aside. "After everything you've done, if you think I'm letting you anywhere near my godson—"

"Exactly what do you believe we've done, Sirius?" Narcissa asked.

"What do I—Lucius kidnapped him!" Sirius yelled, jabbing a finger at James. "He locked—"

"Lucius did!" Narcissa interrupted harshly. "I had no idea what Lucius was doing, I had nothing to do with it. Even if you refuse to believe that, you can certainly believe Draco knew nothing of it, he was a child!"

"I _don't_ believe it."

"I do," James said, and Sirius looked at him. "They didn't know, Sirius. Let it go. It doesn't even have anything to do with Harry, so if he wants to see the young master then let him."

They all stared at him.

James frowned. "What?"

"Only the house elf calls me that," Draco said, sounding somewhat disturbed. James fidgeted and looked away, but said nothing.

"And you wonder why I don't want my godson hanging around your child," Sirius said, his lip curling. "Maybe he didn't know what Lucius did, but he was raised by the man."

"Draco isn't Lucius," Harry said.

"You don't know that."

"Yes, I do. I know him better than you."

"Whatever you think you know is a lie," Sirius spat. "People like them are all the same. He's the same rotten piece of shit as his father."

"Are you choosing to ignore the fact that my son was tied up with you last night?" Narcissa asked. "Or are you just that stupid, Sirius?"

"He might have been there but he wasn't in any danger. Voldemort—" James, Narcissa, and Draco twitched "—knew Harry would break before he ever got as far as killing your brat. The only people actually at risk were Hermione and…"

He trailed off, unable to say the name.

"It's not Draco's fault your lover died," Narcissa said, unapologetic but sympathetic. "Only one person is to blame for that."

"Me," Harry said miserably, closing his eyes and turning his face away so he wouldn't have to see the hatred on Sirius' face.

"No!"

Harry felt a touch on his arm and jerked away, eyes snapping open. Draco had stepped inside, but his hand now dropped away from Harry. He looked slightly hurt at Harry's withdrawal, but said firmly, "It wasn't your fault."

"Indeed," Narcissa agreed. "I was speaking of the Dark Lord."

"They're right," Sirius said quietly. "You didn't kill… That's on Voldemort."

"I'm the reason everyone was there. I was the one that should have died."

" _No_ ," Draco snarled, grabbing Harry by both arms. Harry flinched, but Draco didn't let go, just softened his expression and shifted his hands up to cup Harry's face. "I'm sorry about Professor Lupin, I am, but it doesn't mean you should have died instead."

"And again, I'm agreeing with a Malfoy," Sirius sighed. "No one should have died last night, kid, except Voldemort, but that wasn't going to happen. Re…" He had to pause, take a shaky breath, then continue, "He died saving someone else's life. He wouldn't want you blaming yourself for that. It wasn't your fault."

He looked like he believed it and maybe he did, but Harry didn't.

Sirius sighed shakily. "You can stay," he said to Draco, "if Harry wants to see you."

They all looked at him. Harry looked at Draco. His hands were still on Harry's face, soft and gentle and unthreatening. Harry was still tense, but Draco wasn't looking at him with hatred or accusation. He hadn't tried to hex him or get payback for last night, and with him standing right there Harry realised just how much he needed someone right then. Sirius was too caught up in his own misery to be of any comfort, and Harry wasn't close enough to James to take any comfort from him.

"I don't mind," he said, and Draco smiled at him. He let go of Harry's face, but took hold of one hand, squeezing gently.

Sirius looked at Narcissa. "You can stay out there."

"Sirius," Harry and James said at the same time, and Sirius threw up his hands.

"Fine. Gang up on me. At least Re-"

He broke off. Without another word, he turned, transformed into Padfoot, and bound away up the stairs.

"You can come in, Ms Black," James said.

Narcissa shook her head. "I only wanted to make sure Draco arrived safely. I will return home, if you give word that my son will be safe with you."

"No one will hurt him," James said, so assuredly that Narcissa didn't question him. She turned to Harry.

"I'm sorry about your father."

Harry inhaled sharply. It was the first time anyone had actually brought up Snape with him, and Narcissa knew it wasn't Voldemort that tortured and killed him.

She asked that Draco use the floo to return home, exchanged goodbyes with him, then turned and walked away. Harry waited until she Disapparated before shutting the door after her.

James looked between Harry and Draco, then said, "I'll be upstairs with Sirius."

He bowed his head to Draco and left.

"I always thought," Draco said, watching James climb the stairs, "that if he met me he'd hate me or try to attack me. I think I'd have preferred that. Having him act like this is just weirdly disturbing."

Harry tugged his hand free, moving into the living room as an excuse not to look at Draco. Despite wanting his comfort, he felt uncertain now. Guilty and unworthy.

Draco followed. "Harry…"

"I'm sorry. For last night. I'm sorry all that happened."

"Harry, that wasn't your fault."

"Yes it was. You, all of you, were taken because of me. They tortured you. I heard the screaming."

Draco glanced around, mouth tightening briefly, then said vaguely apologetically, "They didn't torture me. It was mostly your godfather and Lupin. They did it to Granger and Lyle once, too, and they hit the Weasley girl. But they never hurt me. They hurt you," he said, quieter, angrier. "What'd they do to you, Harry?"

Harry turned away, shaking his head. "Why'd you come here, Draco?"

"I love you."

Harry whipped back round to face him, eyes wide.

 _Okay, I didn't see that coming,_ the voice said, stunned.

Sirius had said he loved Harry a few times. Harry didn't really believe it. He spent his whole life knowing no one loved him and Sirius had spent most of that time in Azkaban. Maybe he loved Harry when he was a baby, but when he got out he couldn't know Harry enough to love him and Harry didn't believe anyone _would_ love him. What was there _to_ love? A sick, damaged, lonely little boy? But Sirius was the type that took everything to the max so whether it was true or not, it felt natural for him to say it so Harry didn't comment on it.

Hearing it from Draco was a whole lot different. Draco never lied to him, so hearing him say that…

Draco's cheeks went pink, but he lifted his chin and held Harry's gaze. "I'd have liked to have told you under better circumstances, but I needed to say it now because I need you to know that I'm not abandoning you. I'm not angry about last night, I don't blame you for any of it, and I don't hate you." He reached out and took Harry's hand, holding it gently in his own. "But I know you hardly trust anyone and I want you to know that you can trust me. You said that before, remember? You trust me. So trust me on this: I love you, and I'm here for you, no matter what."

Harry swallowed around a sudden lump in his throat, feeling tears prick his eyes. He looked down at their hands, unable to look Draco in the face. He made a Wish for the room to be soundproof, just in case Sirius or James were eavesdropping, and muttered, "I'm a Death Eater."

"So's my father."

"I killed Snape."

"You did as you were told." But his voice was less steady now.

"I murdered him. He was your favourite teacher."

"He was your father. You should be more upset than me." When Harry didn't respond, he asked, "Do you want me to hate you?"

"No," Harry answered immediately, looking up. "I don't, Draco, but… but I don't want you saying… saying those things and then realising later that you do hate me. That would be worse than you hating me now.

"I won't hate you," Draco said firmly. "Not ever."

"It's not just the things I did. You don't know what they did to me."

"Why would the things _they_ did make me hate _you_? That doesn't even make sense."

Harry snatched his hand away, wrapping both arms around himself and turning away, closing his eyes and dropping the level on his magical one so even that saw nothing.

"Draco, they—" He choked, hugged himself harder, but had to say it. He wouldn't have before, but Draco was saying he loved him and he wouldn't if he knew what had happened to Harry. Harry had to be honest with him when he trusted Draco to do the same, even if it meant making Draco leave him. He knew that even if Draco hated him, he would still be honest, just like he'd always been. Harry needed that more than he needed someone to like him, so he forced the words out in a whisper. "They raped me."

He heard a tiny hitch of breath and hunched his shoulders, waiting for the sound of the floo as Draco left and hoping that he went without any insults.

"Harry, I…"

"Just go."

There was a pause, then: "You want me to leave?"

"I don't want to hear what you have to say. Please, just… I don't blame you for wanting to get away from me, okay? I'd get away from me too if I could."

"What are you talking about? I don't want to get away from you."

"Don't lie to me," Harry snarled, spinning to glare at him, hands dropping to fists by his sides. "You're disgusted with me. You think I don't know that? I'm disgusted too. I'm gross and disgusting and dirty. I tried to scrub him off and I can't and I hate it and—" He sobbed, tried to choke back another, and buried his face in his hands.

Then Draco's arms wrapped around him, one hand curling around the back of his head to tangle in his hair, and Harry burst into tears.

* * *

When Harry calmed down enough to speak, he told Draco about everything except his demon deal—the voice, his childhood, his rocky relationship with Snape, his magic. He didn't have the energy or the will to keep things from him anymore. Keeping secrets could be so exhausting and he didn't want to lie to Draco anymore, so he only kept the darkest, the one he kept from absolutely everyone.

He told Draco about the last two weeks, but didn't go into detail about the torture and Draco didn't push for it, only asked, "Did my father…?"

"He was there when they took me," Harry answered honestly, "but he never hurt me."

"He was just responsible for giving you to the ones who did."

"Draco, I… he didn't, not really. He took James, but it was the Assistant that grabbed me."

Draco shook his head. "But he was there. He was involved."

"He's a Death Eater. He did as he was told."

Draco's gaze flicked to Harry's arm and Harry tugged on his jumper sleeve. The mark was hidden by his magic, but he still felt paranoid about it. "Will you?"

"I have to. He cursed Sirius and James and my friends, if I don't… I can't lose them, Draco."

Draco said nothing, just hugged him. He stayed until well into the evening, never gave any indication of wanting to leave or forcing himself to stay, and Harry started to believe that maybe he meant it when he said he loved him.

When Draco left—with clear reluctance, but saying his mother would be getting worried—Harry accepted a kiss on the cheek but turned his head away from anything more. Draco didn't comment on it, just kissed his temple as well, promised to come see him again soon, and disappeared through the fireplace. Harry headed upstairs, not bothering to tell Sirius and James that Draco was gone before shutting himself in his own bedroom.

 _You're crying again._

"Really?" Harry said, wishing it came out angrier than it did. "I never noticed. Thanks _so much_ for pointing that out. Can't you just leave me alone?"

Silence answered him and he threw himself onto his bed, pressing his face to the pillow and squeezing his eyes shut. He was terrified that he'd just seen Draco for the last time, that Draco would realise he didn't actually want to be around an overpowered freak who couldn't protect himself or his friends. He could change the world around him on a whim and yet he couldn't stop anything that happened in the last two weeks. Draco would either think he was a liar, or realise that despite all his power he was still a pathetic little child, and would never want to see him again. Harry couldn't even blame him.

He jerked his head up when he felt something nudge against his head, then blinked uncomprehendingly at Kiwi. He could've sworn she was on the far side of the bed a moment ago.

 _Cheer up._

"Are… are you making her move?"

 _It's my magic, too._

"Since when did you ever care for me to cheer up?"

 _I don't want you to be miserable._

Harry rolled over and hugged Kiwi to his chest, wiping at the tears on his face and sighing. "I don't want to be miserable either, but it's kind of hard."

 _Get angry,_ the voice advised. _We might not be able to be cheerful, but we can be angry and that beats being miserable._

Harry wished it were that easy.


	31. Chapter 31

**Chapter 31**

Harry thought that sleep would be a relief. He hadn't slept well during his imprisonment, to no surprise, not even during the first week. Back home, back in his own bed, he thought he'd finally get a full night's rest and would feel better in the morning. He knew it wouldn't fix everything, but he thought it would help.

Instead, he woke up gasping and sobbing from nightmares, fresh terror washing through him as he remembered Nott and Bellatrix and the pain they inflicted. His head ached and his heart raced so fast he thought he was having a heart attack, and for fifteen minutes all he could do was sit on his bed, shaking and terrified and hardly breathing while the walls and floor rotted and the metal of his bed rusted and there was nothing he could do until it eventually stopped on its own.

He Wished his bed, floor, and walls fixed, felt distantly glad that Sirius and James hadn't heard anything and come to find out what was going on, and lay down with the covers pulled around him, hoping that whatever just happened never happened again.

* * *

Remus' funeral was on Monday. Harry didn't expect many people to turn up, but most of the Order was there and so were Harry's friends. He was startled and nervous to see them, afraid of their reactions to him, and glad for Draco's presence. Draco was still friends with Harry, but he wasn't under a Word of Death Curse and he was the son of a Death Eater. He viewed things differently.

None of them came alone. Draco was accompanied by Narcissa, of course, and the entire Weasley family had come. Hermione was with Neville and his grandmother, and Cid was with Tyler and Tyler's father, Marcus. Harry remembered the Assistant's comments about Tyler's real father, and made the decision then that he would find out who it was. He and the Assistant were on the same side now and, after everything else, Harry wasn't even mad anymore at the Assistant for kidnapping him; he'd get that information from him. He didn't expect it to make Tyler forgive him for everything, but it made him feel better to be able to do something for his friend.

Assuming they even still were friends.

They didn't get any chance to speak much before the service. Harry had never been to a funeral before, but he'd watched mourners coming out of churches during his time on the streets and seen people standing around graves, a priest solemnly reciting verses. There was no church and no priest here; they had a graveside service with an officiant who said some nice words but he obviously didn't know Remus. Sirius was supposed to speak, but he was barely holding himself together and just shook his head when James nudged him, so James went up instead. He told a story of one of their Hogwarts pranks—one of the genuinely harmless ones—to which Remus had been essential, and it even managed to get a small huff of laughter out of Sirius.

Afterwards, Harry left Sirius and James to accept people's sympathies and retreated to the comparative privacy of behind a tree to dry his eyes and wipe his face, excusing himself even from Draco for a moment. He thought he'd be left alone, but he barely had time to lean against the bark and sigh when Hermione stepped around. Harry straightened, looking at her warily. He didn't know what to say to her, and she seemed just as lost for words. Her eyes were red and puffy, and as she stood there looking at him, fresh tears welled up and spilled down her face.

Beyond her, he saw Draco watching and looking like he wanted to come over, but Harry caught his eye and shook his head ever so slightly. Draco frowned, but stayed with his mother, and Harry's attention returned to Hermione.

"He saved my life," she said tremulously, and then burst into sobs. For the first time ever, Harry took the initiative and hugged her. She hugged him back, clinging tightly and bawling into his shoulder. He said nothing, just silently cried with her. Neville came over and put a hand over one of Harry's, standing behind Hermione and pressing his cheek to her shoulder, shedding a few tears of his own.

 _I am going to drown in your misery,_ the voice complained, and Harry silently snarled back, 'Shut up.' The camaraderie from their time imprisoned was gone and the voice had once again taken to insulting him on a regular basis.

When Hermione's sobs reduced to hiccups, the two boys withdrew so she could straighten up. Neville gave her a handkerchief and she wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

"You okay?" Neville asked Harry quietly.

Harry shrugged.

"I think Gran wants to go," Neville said to Hermione, who sniffed and nodded. She looked at Harry.

"I'm staying with them for the rest of the summer. My parents were worried someone else would come for me and they think it's safer if I'm with a magical family."

"Professor Dumbledore came and personally put some protective charms on our house," Neville said.

There was a pause. None of them were willing to mention that no amount of protective charms would save them from the Word of Death Curse.

Hermione inhaled shakily. "Harry, I'll write to you later, alright? But I just want to say—I don't blame you. What happened—it wasn't your fault."

Harry looked away. She grabbed his hands and he flinched, but she kept hold even though he refused to look at her.

"I mean it, Harry. I don't blame you at all. You Know Who cursed us. He was the one that tried to k-kill me." Her breath hitched, but she didn't start crying again. "He's a monster. I know they took you two weeks before they took us and I can't imagine what they did to you, and I think you're incredibly brave for resisting as long as you did. He killed your mother and has done so many horrible things, I know you wouldn't have wanted to stand down from the fight against him."

Harry swallowed, still not looking around. "Do you think I'm pathetic for giving in? Or bad? I might have been the only person that could fight him and now…"

Neville reached over and squeezed his shoulder. "You saved our lives. There's nothing pathetic or bad about that."

Hermione nodded a firm agreement, and Harry finally looked at them, giving a weak, unhappy smile—which vanished abruptly when Cid and Tyler came storming over. Harry backed up, stepping out of Hermione and Neville's grip and almost falling over a tree root. Cid and Tyler stopped beside them. Tyler looked sad, but Cid was just angry.

"Why didn't he kill you?"

 _And there it is. That hatred we both knew was coming._

"Hey!" Hermione cried. Cid didn't even look at her.

"I know this isn't a good time. I liked Professor Lupin as much as the rest of you, but I'm sorry, I need to know and I don't know if I'll ever see you again. I don't even know if I _want_ to ever see you again."

"What happened wasn't Harry's fault!" Hermione insisted, and Cid did look at her then, glaring.

"Maybe from where you were kneeling, but from where I was—"

"Shut up!" she snapped, and Cid took a startled step back. Harry couldn't blame him; Hermione looked as if she might slap him. "Where I was was lying under Professor Lupin's body. I don't know what you saw from the safety of the other end of the line, but from my end it was You Know Who that cast that Killing Curse, and it was _me_ he was aiming at, and it was Harry who tried to step in front of it. He might not have managed to stop it, but Remus Lupin did so don't you dare stand here, at his funeral, and talk rubbish, Cid Villiers!"

Cid looked momentarily regretful, avoiding Hermione's eye. Harry heard a slight commotion and looked past them to see Ginny and Draco come running over. Mrs Weasley, Ron, and Percy looked as if they were going to follow, but the other Weasleys stopped them approaching. Most of the Order members had left by now, but Dumbledore was keeping Sirius from storming over to Harry's side. Mrs Longbottom was frowning, but made no move to interfere, nor did Marcus Fleetwood or Narcissa. Harry wasn't sure if they wanted Harry to handle this confrontation himself, or if they wanted to let the kids get their vengeance on him.

Cid recovered his courage against Hermione's anger. "It might have been You Know Who that killed Lupin, but Harry was the reason we were there in the first place. We're all cursed because of him. It would have been better if he'd just died."

Draco drew his wand, looking furious on Harry's behalf, but it hadn't even cleared his pocket when there was a loud _SMACK!_ of Hermione's hand slapping Cid's cheek.

"Don't you _dare_ say that, you horrid—"

"Hermione," Harry said quietly, but it was enough to draw everyone's attention to him. "It's okay."

 _The hell it is,_ the voice said at the same time Draco did. He looked as if he might hex Cid, so Harry grabbed his wrist, keeping his wand arm down and giving Harry himself something to cling to.

"It's not!" Hermione objected. "He's supposed to be your friend and he said—"

"You're all at risk of dying because of me. He has every right to hate me and blame me and want me dead. He's right. If Vol-" They all flinched before he even finished, so he changed mid-word. "If You Know Who had just killed me, none of you would be in danger."

"That's bollocks," Ginny said. "Maybe Cid and Neville wouldn't be in danger, but I'm a blood traitor in a family of blood traitors, and my whole family is part of a group specially fighting You Know Who, so that puts me at risk. Hermione and Tyler both have Muggle parents, so that puts them at risk. Cid and Malfoy are the only ones who're really safe. I've heard stories about the first war. I'm betting you have, too," she said to Cid. "You Know Who kills and tortures all sorts of people, for fun and power. We're lucky enough to have grown up while he was gone, but now he's back and that puts all of us at risk, with or without the curse he put on us."

"But now we could die at any moment," Tyler spoke for the first time. "I get what you're saying, but I asked Marcus about this curse and there's no stopping it. It can't be removed and all it takes is You Know Who saying that Harry defied him and we'll just keel over, any time, any where. That's a lot different than the risk of being hunted down by Death Eaters."

Ginny pointed towards her family. "You see him? The one with the long hair? That's Bill, my oldest brother. He's a curse breaker. He said he's going to spend the rest of his life trying to find a way to break the Word of Death Curse."

In that moment, Bill Weasley became Harry's favourite person in the whole world.

"I believe he'll do it," Ginny said with absolute confidence. "And sure, we're in danger until he does, but do you know what? I'd be glad to die before Harry."

Harry gaped. " _What?_ "

She looked at him, expression set. "You're the Boy Who Lived. You're the only person who defeated You Know Who last time, and you might be the only person who can defeat him this time. I've heard enough stories and seen the fear in my parents' eyes to know that if You Know Who won this war, the world would be a really bad place, but he's scared of you, Harry. That's why he did all this. So if me dying is what it takes for you to be able to stand against him again, then I would, because it might not save my life but it'd save the world."

Harry felt like crying again.

"Not all of us are that brave," Tyler said. "I don't want to die, even if that makes me selfish. I'm fifteen and I'm afraid of dying, and all that you just said just makes Cid's original question more relevant." He turned to Harry. "Why didn't he kill you? If he was so determined to keep you from fighting him, why go to the trouble of cursing us and getting your promise when he could have just killed you and guaranteed you _couldn't_ fight him?"

When Voldemort was altering their memories, Harry had considered doing a little alteration himself, to make them forget that Harry's magic was volatile and unusual. He hadn't, not sure why, but he'd known at the time that there was some unexplained thing in the lie Voldemort made them believe. This was it, and Harry's power—and his past—gave him an explanation.

"He couldn't," he lied. "You can't go telling people, but he couldn't kill me."

"Wait, seriously?" Tyler said. "Like, he tried and failed? He literally couldn't kill you?"

Harry nodded. "Whatever protects me, whatever stopped me dying when I was a baby, it still works. He can't kill me."

 _Do they really believe that?_

It looked that way. They were all staring at him incredulously, Cid's mouth gaping open, but none of them accused him of lying. Draco glanced at him sideways, but he didn't object to the lie, as Harry knew he wouldn't.

"What is it?" Tyler asked, eventually breaking the silence. "Why can't he kill you?"

Harry shrugged. "Don't know. He spent two weeks trying to figure it out and trying to torture me into telling him, but I don't know either. Probably the same thing that makes my magic lash out."

They were still staring at him.

"I'm really sorry that he cursed you because of it."

"Oh, Harry," Hermione said, and hugged him again, but at least it broke them out of their stupor.

When she drew back, Ginny said, "I better go before Mum breaks free from Dad. I meant what I said though: Bill'll find a way to break the curse, and then you can go kick You Know Who's butt for us."

She held out a fist. Harry bumped it, smiling weakly and feeling the first spark of something positive. He really hoped Bill did manage it.

Ginny turned to go, but then paused and turned back. "Oh, when's Professor Snape's funeral? You do know, don't you? You Know Who said he was your father, was that true?"

Harry had forgotten about that. He wondered how that worked into their new memories of what happened, but he wasn't about to ask and draw attention to it in case it caused some kind of crack in the memory charm.

He glanced towards James, knowing that admitting his parentage affected him, too, but he wasn't about to run over and get permission. He wasn't willing to lie, either; he was doing that enough right now. So he nodded.

"How did _that_ happen?" Ginny asked.

"My mum cheated," Harry admitted, feeling slightly embarrassed about it. He wasn't sure if he felt embarrassed for her, as pointless as that was, or embarrassed about being a bastard child. He was just glad when none of his friends looked to be judging him about it, although Tyler was peering at him.

"I can see it, actually," he said. "It's not totally obvious, but there's just something in your face…"

Uncomfortable under such scrutiny, Harry cleared his throat and looked to Ginny. "The funeral's tomorrow, but you don't have to come."

"I'd like to. He was a git of a teacher—no offence—but I did see him die. I want to pay my respects."

Hermione nodded firmly and Neville murmured an agreement, but Harry, for reason's he couldn't really say, didn't want them there. Remus had been popular and well-liked; it felt natural people should attend his funeral. Harry didn't think Snape would want the same kind of fuss.

"Don't," he said quietly. "It's just…"

He floundered, trying to explain it without offending his friends, and Draco came to his rescue.

"Snape wouldn't have wanted it," he said bluntly. "You know what he was like. It's just going to be a small, private affair."

Harry nodded his agreement. Hermione looked like she wanted to object, but, perhaps realising that Harry's position as family gave him the right to decide who attended Snape's funeral, she didn't. The boys didn't look very disappointed.

"If you say so," Ginny said. "I'd better go then. See you."

"We'd better go too," Neville said as Ginny walked off. "C'mon, Hermione."

They gave Harry one last smile and walked away. Harry looked between Cid and Tyler.

Cid ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "Shit. I guess I'm sorry for saying you should have died. That was unfair. And I'm sorry for doing all this at Lupin's funeral. I just… look, I'm fucking scared. I know Granger's technically right and what happened wasn't really your fault, but I'm fucking scared of dying, okay? Ginny might be willing to die to save the world, but I'm not that brave."

"I think that's why we're not Gryffindors," Tyler said.

"It is," Cid agreed. "I'm a terrible coward."

"There's nothing cowardly about it," Draco objected. "We can't all be heroes. That's how you end up dead."

"Well, whatever, I don't want to die. I hope her brother does find a way to break the curse, but until then… shit."

"It's okay. You can hate me," Harry told him.

"I don't—look, I don't hate you, Harry. I don't. I'm just… angry at you. I know I should be angry at You Know Who, but I'm too afraid of him. It's easier to be angry at you."

"Do you want to hit me?"

Cid thought about that. "Yeah."

"You can hit me then."

"That's nice and all, but it's not the same if you give me permission."

"Oh," Harry said, and then Cid punched him.

"Oi!" Sirius yelled, and Draco raised his wand.

"It's okay!" Harry called back, holding a hand to his bloody nose, and jerking Draco's arm down again. "It's fine. Draco, don't."

Sirius shrugged free of Dumbledore and stormed over, drawing his wand. Harry Wished it from him, felt it slam into his free hand and wrapped his fingers around it.

"Sirius, leave him, I said he could hit me."

"I thought you weren't going to," Tyler said to Cid.

"I said it wasn't the same, I didn't say I wouldn't do it. I'm still angry at you, by the way," Cid said to Harry. "Hitting you doesn't make it go away. But… if it does, I'll let you know."

Harry nodded and Cid turned and went to stand with the adults.

Harry wiped his nose, but just smeared blood all over his face and hand. Tyler pulled out a handkerchief and gave it to him.

"You haven't said if you hate me or blame me," Harry said, pressing the handkerchief to his face.

"I don't hate you or blame you, but I don't want to hit you either. To be honest, I don't know what I feel. Too much, I know that. You can keep the handkerchief," Tyler said, then turned and walked away.

As Harry's friends and their families left, Dumbledore said something to James and then Disapparated, too, and James and Narcissa approached the trio by the tree.

"It's time we left, Draco," Narcissa said.

"But—" Draco began, but Narcissa gave him a sharp look and he broke off.

Harry squeezed his hand. "It's okay. I'll see you tomorrow?"

He didn't want his other friends there, but he didn't mind Draco's presence at Snape's funeral.

Still looking unhappy, Draco squeezed his hand then let go and walked off with his mother. Sirius stared after them, scowling, until Harry tugged on his sleeve. It was a childish motion, but right then he didn't care.

"Can we please go home now?"

Sirius looked around, gazing over at the still open grave. Harry slipped his free hand into Sirius' and Sirius squeezed his fingers.

"Yeah," he said quietly. "We can go home."

* * *

On Tuesday morning, the Assistant stood hidden at the edge of Cokeworth's small church graveyard and watched Severus Snape get buried. It was a short, unemotional ceremony and with few people attending—only Harry, Sirius, James, Dumbledore, McGonagall, Draco, and Narcissa. The Assistant saw McGonagall sniffling wetly into a handkerchief, but no one else shed a tear.

When they were gone, and the gravediggers had filled the hole and left, the Assistant went forward and knelt in front of the pile of fresh dirt. He didn't say anything, just sat there for while, looking at the simple headstone with only Snape's name and dates on it. Eventually he reached over to lay a hand against the stone, then got up, turned away, and Disapparated.

Yaxley was asleep when he returned to the safe house, which suited the Assistant just fine. His hands trembling now, he found some parchment and ink, wrote a short message to himself, and tucked it in his pocket.

Then he carefully erased his memory of Snape's death.

He suddenly found himself wondering why, exactly, he had plans to act against Yaxley today. It wasn't like he planned to betray Voldemort—he couldn't even if he wanted—but freeing himself of some of Yaxley's control wasn't the same as betraying Voldemort. He would still work for the Dark Lord, but he'd be able to fight back against Yaxley again. He could get the bastard to stop being so violent. It was just strange that he suddenly felt so inclined to do it today of all days, instead of any time before. Nearly getting killed a few days ago was unpleasant, but even that wasn't usually enough to make him turn on his Master. Death didn't scare him.

Still, the urge was there and getting some of his free will back was always good, so he left the flat and headed for Coleford.

Breaking into Black Stag House was not easy. The protective spells on it were simple enough to get past—he just had to trick them into thinking he wasn't there—but Harry's magic wasn't an actual spell. The Assistant wasn't entirely certain how Harry's magic worked, but the magic around the whole house was directly opposed to letting him inside, like it held a personal grudge against him. Which was ridiculous, as magic had no will of its own. It just existed. That probably meant Harry's will was guiding it, and the easiest thing to do would be to change Harry's will, but the Assistant couldn't do that while Harry was inside the house. So he had to take the hard route and manipulate the magic so that it obeyed him instead of Harry.

When it was done, he Apparated into Harry's bedroom, invisible. Harry was on his bed, leaning against the pillows with a book he didn't look as if he was actually reading. The Assistant went to his desk, picked up a quill, and wrote a short message on a bare scrap of parchment. Harry heard and looked over, scrambling up and over to watch the quill apparently writing by itself. The Assistant finished, set the quill down, gave Harry enough time to read it and look around, then made himself visible.

"Is this his idea of a joke?" Harry asked, voice quiet and blue eye twisting to point downwards, presumably to keep an eye on Sirius and James. "Sending you for me hours after I bury my father?"

"You've got a Dark Mark on your arm when Voldemort wants you. It's not there to look pretty."

"Then what do you want?"

"I need you to do something for me."

"Why should I do anything for you?"

"Because I won't give you much of a choice."

"That's encouraging," Harry said with a roll of his eyes. "Why don't you just do it yourself? And what's wrong with you?"

The Assistant glanced down at his hands, although he trembled all over now, a thrum of pain running through his whole body. What he was doing wasn't technically covered by any of his orders, nor even classified as a loophole, but it was borderline treachery and so the Bond punished him for it.

"I'm in a mild amount of pain, and I need you to make someone do something for me because I can't use magic against this person."

Harry looked at him curiously. "Who is it?"

"Will you do it?"

"Is it Voldemort? Because I'm not doing anything against him. I can't."

"It's not Voldemort. Trust me," he said when Harry looked suspicious, "I'm not going to betray or act against him any more than you are, I just have different reasons for my loyalty."

Harry appeared to consider asking what reasons those were, but instead said, "I'll do it if you do something for me."

"What?"

"Tell me who Tyler Lyle's real dad is."

"Done."

Harry looked surprised. "Really?"

"I've got no reason to hide that. I planned to tell him myself anyway. He'll trust it more coming from you."

"Alright. What am I doing then?"

The Assistant held out his hand. Harry looked at it, then up at him.

"I'm not going anywhere with you. I can do whatever it is from right here."

The Assistant raised an eyebrow.

"I can," Harry insisted. "Just tell me what it is."

Curious if it was true, the Assistant capitulated. "I need you to make Preston Yaxley retract every order he's ever given me, the next time he sees me."

"What orders has he given you?"

The Assistant said nothing.

"Fine," Harry said. A heartbeat passed, then: "It's done. Who's Tyler's dad?"

"I'll tell when his orders have actually be retracted."

"Hey, no, how do I know you'll come back?"

The Assistant took off his cloak and laid it over Harry's desk. "I'll be back for that."

Harry scowled at it, but made no further objections.

Feeling naked, and with his pain levels rising from mild to moderate, the Assistant turned invisible and Apparated away. Back at the safe house, he bent over Yaxley's sleeping form and shook him awake. Yaxley woke with a groan, turned to look up at him, and said, "I retract every order I've ever given you."

Immediately the pain stopped. The Assistant grinned.

"Much obliged, my Master," he said. "Go back to sleep."

At a nudge of magic, Yaxley went out like a light. Grinning and humming, the Assistant erased Yaxley's memories of the past minute and waltzed out.

"Told you it worked," Harry said as soon as the Assistant reappeared in his bedroom. "Now tell me about Tyler's dad."

He'd been inspecting the Assistant's cloak and now clutched it tightly, apparently intent on holding it hostage until he got what he wanted.

"His name's Dylan Swift."

Harry frowned. "Swift… wait, Dylan Swift is Cid's step-dad."

"Yep."

"That makes Cid and Tyler step-brothers? And that means Layla's his half-sister."

"Mm-hm."

Harry's frown faded. "I think they'll like that."

"Can I have my cloak back now? I feel naked without it."

Harry's expression twisted again. "Ew."

The Assistant chuckled, accepting the cloak and swinging it about his shoulders. Harry watched him, a bitter look in his eye.

"I can make you one if you like."

"No," Harry said immediately, then he picked up a shirt lying on the floor and turned it inside out to show him the runes dyed onto the inside. "Why didn't this work? I thought it would stop suppression runes working on me. It worked when I tried it in a circle, but…"

"But not when I caught you," the Assistant said, taking the shirt and inspecting the runes. "Don't feel too bad; your runes are right. You've actually got the best combination you could have used here. Nice use of the Enochian."

"So why didn't it work?"

"If I remember right, you were wearing a short-sleeved shirt that day. The chains went right on your skin, bypassed this entirely," the Assistant explained, passing the shirt back. "This works against a circle, and it would work against my cloak, but it's no good against anything going direct on your skin."

Harry glared down at the shirt. "So I have to wear long-sleeved shirts forever? That's annoying."

"I've got another suggestion," the Assistant said, and Harry looked up, hope obvious in his gaze. "Tattoos."

"Tat…? Wait, you mean I get this—" he shook the shirt "—tattooed on me?"

"Yup. Full body is best, if you want complete protection. Otherwise your wrists and hands, to protect against chains like before." He pushed up his own sleeve and indicated the space from the base of his palm to halfway up his forearm. "You should cover at least this much. A chain would work, but best layout is mosaic."

"Mosaic?"

"Lots of little runes, repeat the combination over and over."

"I'm not fond of tattoos," Harry said, right hand rubbing at his left forearm.

The Assistant shrugged. "Your choice, just thought I'd make the suggestion. Anyway, I should be off. I'll see you around."

He held out his hand. Harry eyed it, then cautiously took it and shook. The Assistant Stunned him. He caught Harry as he fell, put a hand to his head, and erased his memories of controlling Yaxley. It would do neither of them any good if Voldemort found out what the Assistant had convinced Harry to do. Safer all round if Harry just forgot it, though he didn't like fiddling with Harry's memory again. He'd been the one to make the kid think James was under the Word of Death Curse, and he knew Antonin had altered his memories before that. Too many memory charms and the kid's mind was likely to shatter.

He heard footsteps in the hall outside just as he finished, and left hurriedly. It was past midday by then so he went to a nice little cafe in Cornwall for lunch, but when he reached into his pocket for the money to pay for it, he found a bit of parchment in his pocket with his coin pouch. Once he'd handed over the money and left the cafe, he unfolded it.

 _Erased memory. Get mem. rest. NOT from SS._

It was written in his own writing and the word 'not' was underlined three times. It wasn't the first time he'd erased his own memory, but he wondered why he told himself not to go to Snape for the memory restorative potion. Snape was the go to guy for all Death Eaters looking for potions, and memory restoratives were controlled substances so it wasn't like he could pick one up from Slug & Jiggers. Fiddling with memories could be tricky business, so the law said only trained healers should deal with them.

Bemused but knowing himself well enough to know he wouldn't have given such instructions without a reason, the Assistant headed for Knockturn Alley, found an illicit potion dealer, and haggled the price down to something actually reasonable. Rather than going to Yaxley's afterwards, he went to his cave over Hogsmeade. He hadn't been there in a while and had to clear out rats and spiders before sitting down to drink the potion.

Then he remembered why he told himself not to go to Snape, why he'd chosen today to turn on Yaxley, why he'd gone to such convoluted lengths in the first place—he was going to betray Voldemort.

He couldn't have got himself free of Yaxley's orders when he knew his endgame was to betray Voldemort. He was utterly unable to disobey the order to never act against Voldemort, the order reinforced by his Trigger. But he only wanted to betray him in retaliation for Snape's death. Without knowing Snape was dead, he didn't want to betray Voldemort, he just wanted to escape Yaxley's orders, which he'd never been ordered not to do, with or without his Trigger.

Now, though, he wanted to betray Voldemort, and without any orders on him he was free to do so.

* * *

When Sirius found Harry unconscious on his bedroom floor, Harry lied and said he'd had a seizure. He hadn't—he knew he hadn't because he didn't have any of the usual post-seizure symptoms—but he wasn't about to tell Sirius that the Assistant had been by. Especially as the Assistant had apparently come by just to talk about runes, give Harry the name of Tyler's birth father, and then knock him out. It was an odd bit of behaviour even by the Assistant's standards.

Sirius had come up to fetch him because McGonagall came by to enact Snape's will, which was a simple matter of telling Harry that he'd inherited everything Snape owned. She also gave him the key to Snape's Gringotts vault, and a cardboard box.

"I collected a few things from his rooms at Hogwarts that I thought you might want," she told him.

Harry assumed it would be books—as far as he recalled, Snape had nothing else he might want—but when he opened it he was startled to find the box bigger on the inside and filled with all his old Famous Figurines.

 _Who'd have thought your daddy would be so sentimental,_ the voice sneered, but Harry told it to shut up and just sat staring at them for a while.

They went to Diagon Alley the next morning. Sirius readily agreed; he desperately needed to get out of the house, so they made a day of it. They visited Gringotts, where Harry emptied Snape's vault and shut it down. There wasn't much in it and Harry converted half of it to pounds and kept it on him rather than transferring it to his own vault.

They visited Weasley Wizard Wheezes next, where Harry got a 100% discount on anything he wanted. He had to admit he was quite impressed with the twins selection of items; they clearly put his money to good use and he spent a while browsing the shop. He left with a couple of Extendable Ears, a Headless Hat, and a half dozen Patented Day Dream Charms. He was tempted by the pygmy puffs—adorable miniature puffskeins—but decided not to. He'd never had a pet before and wasn't sure he'd be a very good owner; it seemed a bit late to try now, especially as they'd outlive him.

James also got a Headless Hat and a Basic Blaze Box of Weasleys' Wildfire Whiz-Bangs, and Sirius had a box from the trick foods section of the store. Harry made a mental note to be careful about everything he ate from then on.

When they got home, Harry went upstairs to put away the money from Snape's vault, but stopped just inside his room. A Death Eater mask sat on his desk. He swivelled his eye to look around, but James and Sirius were heading outside to the garden. He moved over to the desk. A bit of paper lay atop the mask, with just a short note on it.

 _The mask belonged to Severus; you'll need one now. – A._

* * *

Although free of Yaxley's orders, the Assistant had to make sure he couldn't give him anymore before he embarked on betraying Voldemort. To that end, he robbed a Muggle bank (he could rob Gringotts, but Muggle banks were easier), converted the money to Galleons, made a purchase, and then went to see Narcissa Black.

She accepted his visit, but only allowed him as far into the Manor as the foyer. He caught a glimpse of Draco's blond hair at the edge of the door to the drawing room.

"State your business quickly," Narcissa said coldly.

"I was hoping to buy your house elf."

Narcissa raised one perfect eyebrow. "My house elf is not for sale."

"I'd be willing to pay a substantial price and provide a replacement. I already have one ready—young, able, extremely eager to please."

"Dobby has served me since my wedding, Mr Assistant. I'm not willing to part with him."

"Just Assistant will do, Ms Black, and I understand your position but… I didn't particularly want to mention it, given the impropriety of doing so… however, Dobby is, ah… eccentric, is he not? Surely you'd rather a less… odd… house elf?"

"I don't think you have a right to comment on my house elf's state of mind. I think you should leave."

"My apologies," he said sincerely. "It was out of place, but true. If I might also say one more thing before you make a final decision—would you be so eager to keep him if I made you aware that he knew about James Potter ever since Lucius brought him here?"

A heavy silence filled the foyer after that. Narcissa stared at the Assistant, her face carefully blank of any emotion, but her eyes cold and hard.

Narcissa turned her head suddenly. "Dobby!"

There was a crack, then: "You called, Mistress?"

"Did you know about James Potter before Lucius was arrested?"

Dobby cowered. "Master is telling Dobby not to tells anyone, even Mistress, and the young master!" he cried, but Narcissa stopped listening after the first word, looking back at the Assistant.

"I want to see the replacement."

"Of course. Pippin!"

Another house elf appeared with a gentle pop, wearing a tea towel fashioned into a dress of sorts.

"Yes, Master Assistant?"

"Let Ms Black here take a look at you."

Pippin stood still as Narcissa inspected her. She was a little smaller than Dobby, but with bigger ears and a gleam of eagerness in her eyes that Dobby didn't have.

"She's in good health?"

"Perfect. And young, like I said. I would expect her to live to serve your great-great-great-grandchildren."

"How much are you offering with her?"

"A hundred galleons."

Narcissa couldn't help the look of surprise at that. It was enough to buy a brand new house elf.

"Why are you so eager for Dobby?" she asked him.

"We met once before. I liked the little guy, and it seemed you should have an elf whose loyalty is directly to you and not in any way to your ex-husband."

She eyed him suspiciously, but there was really no disadvantage to her in this bargain so she agreed, as he knew she would. Money and elves exchanged hands and the Assistant left with Dobby scurrying after him.

"Dobby is not remembering meeting you, sir."

"I might have lied a little bit. Don't tell anyone."

"Yes, Master Assistant, sir. We is going to your home?"

"Eh… sort of."

They went to his cave. Dobby looked around dubiously. The Assistant conjured a couple of armchairs.

"Have a seat, Dobby."

Dobby burst into tears.

When Dobby finished crying and stuttering gratitude and praises at the Assistant for being so kind as to treat a house elf as an equal, he climbed up onto one of the armchairs, feet dangling off the end as he looked up at the Assistant.

"Alright, Dobby, I've got an offer for you. Hear me out before you say anything, alright? You need to hear it all before you decide."

Dobby nodded, ears waggling.

"I'm willing to set you free and then pay you to work for me, but the work I'm going to ask you to do is a little bit odd and requires secrecy. The same level of secrecy you gave Lucius about James Potter. I can't have you telling anyone or I'm going to be in some serious trouble with a lot of people. What do you say?"

"Master would set Dobby free?"

"Then hire you, yeah."

Dobby burst into tears again. The Assistant sighed.

* * *

"I need to go out."

Harry resisted the urge to fidget as James looked up from his book and Padfoot transformed. Both were on the living room sofa and both frowned at Harry's words, though James was worried where Sirius was disapproving.

"I'll be careful, I promise, but I just… I have to go. I'll be back in a few hours."

"Harry—" Sirius began, but he interrupted.

"If you say no, I'll go anyway. I'm only telling you so you don't think I've been kidnapped or run off, but I'm going."

"Harry, it's late and there's a dark wizard running around. You can't just go wandering off; it's not safe."

"I'm perfectly safe. Voldemort's done with me, remember?"

"That doesn't mean the Death Eaters won't—"

"He wouldn't spare me then set his Death Eaters on me. He's not a threat to me any more as long as I don't threaten him, which I won't because I'm not losing you or my friends. I'm going," he said, and teleported before they could argue further.

He reappeared at Spinner's End. The house hadn't changed since he was there four years ago—still small, dark, and full of books. He set about putting up protection spells, everything he could think of to protect the house except anti-Apparition, even Wishing for no one who wasn't related to him by blood to be able to get into the house. He disconnected the fireplace from the floo network—he Wished it, anyway, and he was confident enough in his magic to not doubt it was done—and when he was satisfied, he made himself invisible, left the house on foot, and walked for ten minutes until he reached the small church and its graveyard.

Snape's grave was still the freshest there. Harry looked around to check no one was nearby then Wished that anyone who walked past in the next half an hour wouldn't notice the graveyard, just pass by with only a fleeting recognition that it was there. Then he crouched by the grave, made a Wish, and the dirt came flying out.

He levitated the coffin out of the ground, put it aside, and transfigured a small pebble into an exact duplicate. He put Snape's Death Eater mask in it, then put it in the grave and Wished the dirt back into place, making sure it looked undisturbed before getting to his feet, making the real coffin invisible, and leaving the graveyard with it floating along behind him.

Back in Spinner's End he pushed the furniture aside to make room on the floor for the coffin and knelt beside it. He hesitated as he laid his hands on the wood then slowly opened it. Snape lay inside, dressed in his best robes, arms crossed over his chest, wand tucked under his hands. The undertaker had been a witch and, at Harry's Wish, Snape had been preserved with no chemicals, potions, or anything that required actually altering the body in any way. Only spells were used and yet, a week after dying, he still looked freshly dead.

Harry dispelled the preservation charms and moved Snape's arms. He reached for Snape's robe, then stopped, hit by a sudden flashback of sitting in that empty room, both of them naked and uncomfortable. He forced the memory away, pushing it down as deep as he could. He wasn't ready to deal with that. He didn't know if he ever would be, but even if he would it wasn't right now. He had a task to do.

Hands shaking slightly, he unbuttoned the robe and the shirt underneath. The emerald pendant that tracked Harry lay loosely against Snape's pale chest. He'd fought to have it buried with Snape, arguing with Sirius and Dumbledore, who'd wanted Sirius to keep it in case Harry went missing ever again. Harry merely pointed out that it hadn't done them any good to know where he was in June; they still hadn't been able to save him. The last thing Harry needed was people able to track him when he was one day going to have to answer Voldemort's summons.

He pushed the pendant aside and pressed his palm flat against Snape's chest, directly over his heart.

 _Do you realise how insane this is? Do you realise the danger you've put us in?_

"Shut up."

He closed his eyes, focusing, dredging up every memory he had of Snape, good and bad—seeing him for the first time in a Potions lesson; getting picked up from the Dursleys and going shopping in Diagon Alley; numerous hospital visits with Snape scowling unhappily as they sat in waiting rooms; waking up in the Chamber of Secrets to find Snape had almost died for him; finding out Snape was his mystery gift giver and attacking him; hating him for a year but slowly forgiving him; being relieved when Snape believed him about not putting his name in the Goblet of Fire; Snape's encouraging smile as Harry walked to the first task with a stomach full of nerves; swimming lessons; Snape's face as he admitted to being his father and the brief flicker of hurt when Harry screamed that he wasn't; Snape impressed at how fast he picked up Occlumency; Snape looking guilty after Harry made him witness his memories of living with the Dursleys; Snape saying he'd rather die than see a Dark Mark on Harry's arm; Snape crouching in front of him and promising to never hurt him as Harry sat shivering and hurt and terrified; Snape fighting for him; Snape kneeling in that large meeting room, his face perfectly calm, unaccusing, accepting, forgiving as Harry turned on him with the intention to kill.

"Wake up."

Snape's eyes flew open and he gasped like a drowning man pulled from the water by God himself.


	32. Chapter 32

**Chapter 32**

Early that evening, Lord Voldemort appeared in the atrium of the Ministry of Magic, causing panicked pandemonium. Several Aurors made brave attempts to attack him, but although Voldemort never let a spell touch him, his only retaliation was to conjure vines that whipped down from the ceiling, grabbed the Aurors by their ankles, and hoisted them up to hang in midair.

Almost everyone else fled, except for those who fainted and some who were too frozen with terror to move. Dolores Umbridge was one of the latter, stood by the fountain of magical brethren, trembling on the spot. Voldemort walked right up to her and, to the startled disgust of those remaining, took her between his hands and kissed her firmly on the mouth.

"It occurred to me," he said after breaking the kiss, "that I never thanked you for your efforts to get Harry Evans expelled from Hogwarts earlier this year by planting those Spinaspectus Potions on him and putting Henry Athelstan under the Imperius to ensure he expelled the boy. I know you normally deal with one of my Death Eaters, but I personally wanted to let you know that I really appreciate the help."

Umbridge squeaked. Voldemort smiled at her, and she fainted. Voldemort turned and walked back towards the Apparition rooms, only to pause and turn back. He lifted his wand, touched it to his throat, and cast _Sonorus_ before announcing, "My mother was an inbred whore who fucked a Muggle donkey and that's why I'm so ugly."

He lowered his wand, grinned, and promptly vanished.

* * *

Harry sat on the sofa in Spinner's End. Snape sat on the armchair. The coffin was still on the floor.

 _I still can't believe you did this._

"So not only did you fake my death," Snape said slowly, "you did so in a way that fooled an undertaker and kept me from dying of dehydration, hunger, or—" he glanced warily at the coffin "—oxygen starvation."

Harry shrugged. "I wanted it to happen, so it happened."

"I need a drink," Snape said, and went to the kitchen. He came back with a bottle of vodka and a shot glass, already wet. He poured himself another, knocked it back. "And you're absolutely certain I'm not an inferi or some other undead being?"

"Pretty sure. You've got a pulse and everything, and I never actually Wished for you to die, just sort of go into stasis. Last time I tried to Wish something alive after it died it was a lot different to you."

Snape looked at him sharply. "You've tried necromancy?"

"I tried to resurrect a kitten when I was a kid. It just turned into a zombie and it was still rotting and everything and I had to kill it again."

"I see," Snape said. He rolled the shot glass between his fingers. "You could have killed me with this stunt."

"I was supposed to kill you."

"Not to sound ungrateful, but why didn't you? You risk the lives of all your friends, not to mention Black, by doing this."

"And James. But it's not like—"

"Not Potter."

Harry frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Potter isn't under the curse. Your memory was altered."

Harry stared at him. "How do _you_ know that? The only time they could have done that was when Voldemort did everyone else and you were unconscious by then. And anyway, I watched Voldemort change everyone else's memories, but he didn't come near me."

 _The Assistant did,_ the voice reminded him. _And got unnecessarily touchy, too._

"Memory Charms are sneaky things," Snape said. "Done well, you could never guess when they're placed on you, but I know they memory charmed you because they did it at least once before we even reached the room."

Harry recoiled. "What?"

"Potter is working for Lucius. Before we were taken down to the meeting room, Antonin altered your memories so you would think Potter had been unwilling kidnapped alongside you. I expect further memory charm was placed on you to make you think he was placed under the Word of Death Curse, and he's been sent back with you to continue spying and make sure you don't step out of line."

Harry stared at him, horrified not just by the revelation but by what else it meant. "I can't tell anyone. If I tell, Voldemort might find out and then kill the others."

"Unfortunately, yes," Snape agreed. "Let me think on it. There must be some way to reveal the information without it tying back to you."

"You think?" Harry asked hopefully.

"With any luck. In the mean time, tell me why you did this." He gestured vaguely between himself and the coffin. Harry glanced over at it.

 _Because you're an idiot._

"Because you owe me."

"My death is not enough for you?"

"Death ends things. It doesn't make up for what you did. It doesn't answer my questions."

"What questions would those be?" Snape asked, looking as if he didn't really want to know.

"Voldemort told me you told him about the prophecy. Is that true?"

"Is that what he said before you tortured me?"

"Is it true?"

Snape dropped his gaze to the shot glass he still held. "Yes."

"Why?" Harry paused, swallowed, asked, "Did you hate me?"

Pain flitted across Snape's face. "No. I've never hated you."

"Then why did you tell him about it? It made him try to kill me. It made him kill my mum and you said before that you loved her."

"I do."

"Then why did you tell him?"

Snape put the shot glass on the rickety table. "I don't know what Dumbledore and the Dark Lord have told you, but Sybill Trelawney made that prophecy during a job interview she had with Dumbledore. It was held in the Hog's Head pub in Hogsmeade the winter before you were born. I was eavesdropping when Trelawney made the prophecy and only overheard the first part."

"You're not answering my question."

"I didn't know it was about you, Harry. I didn't even realise it could potentially be about you because I didn't even know you existed then. It was a few weeks after Lily and I… had the affair, and I didn't know she was pregnant. Possibly she didn't even know at that point. When I told the Dark Lord what I'd overheard, it was because I knew it would be useful to him. I didn't know it had anything to do with my unborn child—with Lily's child."

"If you had—"

"I would never have told him."

"But you'd have put someone else's child in danger."

"Are you looking for an apology for the person that I am? I was a Death Eater. I believed in some of the Dark Lord's ideals, if not all of them, even if I didn't always approve of his methods. I was nineteen years old and yes, I would have sacrificed some nameless, faceless child because that's all they were to me. Just another person I didn't know and thought I would never meet, but they were a potential threat to the Dark Lord so I told him about it."

"Why did you join the Death Eaters? Why did you have an affair with my mum? You say you believed in Voldemort's ideals but you loved a Muggleborn. How does that make sense?"

Snape laughed bitterly. "Love doesn't make sense, Harry. You'll realise that when you're older. Besides, calling what Lily and I had an affair is a stretch. It was a single incident that we both regretted, and it had nothing to do with my joining the Death Eaters."

"Why'd you do it?"

Snape sighed. "The simple answer? The Dark Lord offered me power and I jumped at the chance."

"No, I mean why did you and Mum…?"

Snape glanced at his vodka, apparently debating whether to have another shot, but he left it, sighing and leaning forwards, putting his elbows on his knees and staring at his hands as he answered. "We met one night about a year and a half after we finished Hogwarts. We hadn't seen each other since leaving school and we hadn't spoken in longer. We were friends as children, but after an incident during our OWL exams, we fell out. When I saw her that night, she was upset. I attempted to comfort her, we talked, and things happened. I'm sure you don't need the details."

"But she was married," Harry pushed. "Sirius told me Mum and James got married right out of school. Didn't you know that?"

"Of course I did, but I was nineteen years old and I hated Potter," Snape said, his voice turning harsh for the first time that night. "I wasn't going to stop what happened out of any thought for him, and as far as I was concerned, if Lily didn't want to stop it then that was that."

"Why didn't she?"

"I don't know. I didn't force her," he added, looking up and holding Harry's gaze. "I swear to you on my life, I did not force her into anything. If she'd said no or backed off or pushed me away, I'd have stopped."

"I believe you."

Snape relaxed. "I can't tell you what she was thinking or why she did it," he went on. "We didn't exactly talk about it afterwards."

"You talked at some point. She told you about me."

"Yes."

"What happened then?" Harry asked.

"We agreed it was best if I stayed out of your life, if you were mine."

"When did you know I was?"

"Not until you were born. There's no way to test paternity in the womb."

"Why didn't you want to be around me?"

Snape sighed again, straightening up and leaning back in the chair. "Harry, please understand, our decision was for your benefit. I was a Death Eater, it was the middle of a war. Your mother didn't know about me, not for certain, but I'm sure she had her suspicions and she could hardly be found to have the child of a Death Eater. It would do no good for either of us. Besides, from what I've learnt since, she didn't even admit to Potter about her indiscretion until the night she died."

"That's what James told me, too," Harry said. "But I don't understand why you never told me. Everyone thought James was dead. You could have said you were my real dad, but you didn't until they found him alive and you had no choice. Were you really going to let me believe he was my father forever?"

Snape hesitated to answer, looking wary of Harry's reaction, but said, "Yes. After your childhood, I knew you would hate me if you knew the truth and I preferred to let you think well of me as a mentor than hate me as a father. I know what it's like to hate one's parents. I thought it would be better if you had some idealised version of a man who was willing to die for you than the truth of a man who failed you."

That made an irritating amount of sense. He could understand Snape's logic, even if he didn't like it. But still—"Why not take me when I was baby? Why did you leave me with the Dursleys?"

Snape couldn't meet his gaze. Harry clenched his jaw angrily.

"I don't have a satisfactory answer to that, Harry," Snape said quietly. "I can tell you I was a mess after Lily died and in no fit state to take in a child. By the time I was, you were settled with your aunt and uncle, and I thought the protections on the house were too important to take you from there. I was wrong, I know that now, but there's nothing I can do about it. I can't change the past, Harry."

"If you could, would you have taken me away?"

"If I could, I would never have let you go there in the first place."

Harry wished that made him feel better.

"So," Snape said. "Are there any more questions, or do you kill me now?"

"You think I'm going to kill you?"

Snape shrugged. "You said you wanted answers and I've given them to you. Letting me continue living just puts your friends in danger."

"Do you want to die?"

"I'm not suicidal, and I certainly would rather you don't become a murderer, but my death is better than the death of five children." He paused, then said reluctantly, "And much that I hate Black, I acknowledge that his death would be a greater loss to you than mine."

"I don't want to kill you," Harry muttered, because he sort of felt like he should. The voice certainly thought so.

"I'm grateful to hear that."

"It doesn't mean I've forgiven you."

"I don't expect you to."

Harry glared at Snape, angry that he was being so calm about it. "Why are you so accepting of that?"

"What do you want from me, Harry? Do you want me to be hurt that you won't forgive me? Do you want me to get indignant and demand forgiveness I don't deserve?"

"I don't know!" he yelled, then sighed. "I don't know. I just… it doesn't make sense to me, how you could do what you did when I showed up—taking me in and getting all my medical stuff sorted and teaching me to swim and everything—but you couldn't do it when I was a kid. I don't get it and I want to hate you for not being there, but I can't because you fought for me in that room and now you're willing to die for me and you kept my figurines and it pisses me off that you're just sitting there looking guilty, but you don't care that I'm angry at you and you don't care that I could kill you and you should because I'm your fucking kid!"

 _Congratulations. It's taken you a whole year but you've finally admitted it._

"Oh shut up," he snarled.

"I didn't say anything."

"I wasn't talking to you."

The corners of Snape's mouth twisted down slightly at that, but he didn't comment on it. "I do care that you're angry at me. Do you think I like being hated by my own child?"

"Then fucking show it! Stop being selfish and just show me you fucking care!"

"Selfish?" Snape repeated, his own voice rising. "You think I'm being selfish?"

"You are! You don't want to deal with me being angry so you think you can just sacrifice yourself and that makes everything okay. You don't get to only care when I'm in trouble; that's not how it works. That's not what dads do!"

"Is that what you want? For me to be a dad after all this time refusing to acknowledge me as such?"

"I wanted you to be a dad when I was a kid!"

"I can't change that! I'm sorry, Harry. I can say that as many time as you need to hear it, but I can't go back and change things no matter how much either of us might want to." He paused, took a few calming breaths, went on: "But you're wrong to think I don't care, or only care when you're in trouble. I do care about you, I just… don't know how to show it. I don't handle emotions well."

"So I can blame you for that too? My emotional outbursts?"

"Why not?" Snape said dryly. "Blame me for everything bad and give Lily all the credit for anything good about you. Will it make you feel better?"

"Stop doing that!" Harry yelled, and the bottle of vodka exploded.

Silence. Vodka dripped down Snape's face and over his robes. A few shards of glass were buried in his cheek and the back of his hand, which he threw up too late to protect his face. Harry clenched his jaw and the glass vanished and the wounds healed themselves, closing up to leave only trickles of blood to show they were ever there.

"Sorry," he muttered and a hand towel appeared on Snape's lap.

He lifted it and rubbed his face dry then wiped off his hands.

"Stop doing what?" he asked when he was done, dropping the towel onto the table and taking up his wand to cast a Drying Charm on his robes.

"Stop trying to make yourself a scapegoat and sacrifice, like letting me hate you will make everything better."

"What else am I supposed to do? You hate me. You've made that perfectly clear plenty of times. Yes, I'd like for you to not hate me—I'll be honest and say I'd appreciate it if you actually liked me, but after everything that's happened I'm not foolish enough to expect that. So what do you expect of me, Harry? To hate myself for what I've done? Because I already do, but I've got enough dignity that I won't publicise my misery."

"You could try and make up for it."

"How? Tell me, Harry. How can I make up for it? If there's a way, then I will do whatever it takes, but you're going to have to tell me what to do because I honestly don't see how I can make up for failing you like I have."

 _We could use him. He might know where to get the kind of books we need to research demon deals, and he's going to have to do something with himself now everyone thinks he's dead. It's not like he can go back to teaching. Anyone finds out he's alive and your friends die, so secret research seems like a good way to spend his time._

Harry had to bite his lip and he thought back, 'The Assistant knows how to break the deal. We only need to make him tell us.'

 _Then his question still stands: how can he make it up to you? CAN he make it up to you? Do you even want him to?_

"What's it saying to you?"

Harry glanced at Snape then looked away and got up. "I have to go home. Sirius and—well, Sirius will be getting worried and James might realise something's up."

"Where do they think you are right now?"

Harry shrugged. "I just told them I was going out."

"And they let you?" Snape asked incredulously.

"I didn't really give them a choice," Harry admitted. Snape rolled his eyes. Harry scowled. "I can look after myself. And they have to get used to me going out. Voldemort's going—"

"Dark Lord," Snape interrupted. "You cannot call him by his name now. Don't look at me like that. It's a sign of disrespect to use his name and he has punished Death Eaters for doing so. You should get into the habit of calling him the Dark Lord."

"Fine," Harry grumbled. "But my point stands. He'll call me at some point and I'll have to leave without any good explanation to Sirius."

Snape grit his teeth and didn't answer.

"I'll come back tomorrow, or the day after," Harry said. "You've got food in the cupboards for now. I put protections all over the house and a Perception Filter Charm. No one but you and me can get in or out, and it looks empty from outside, but you probably shouldn't leave."

"You expect me to stay here for the rest of my life?"

"No, but just until we figure out what you can do."

Snape nodded reluctantly, and Harry left without another word.

He wasn't surprised to return home and find Sirius and James waiting up for him, but he didn't expect James to be sat with his elbows on his knees, hands tangled in his hair and shaking as he drew in harsh, fast breaths. He jerked his head up when Harry came in, relief filling his eyes and he gulped down a breath but choked on it and started coughing.

"Two," Sirius said to Harry, sat by James and rubbing his back.

"What?"

"That's how many panic attacks he's had since you left."

Harry might have felt guilty for that if not for the recent revelation. As it was, he was trying not to think about James so his magic wouldn't lash out in anger.

"Going to tell us where you've been?"

"No."

"You drunk?"

"No," Harry said again, glancing at him in confusion. "Why would you think that?"

"You smell like alcohol."

"I was with someone who was drinking. He spilt some."

"Who?"

"Just someone," he snapped. "Stop prying into my business."

"You're my godson; where you disappear off to in the middle of the night is my business."

"I told you I was leaving. It's not like I ran out without saying anything."

"You didn't wait for permission."

"Would you have given it?"

"That's besides the point."

"Which means no."

"Why should I?" Sirius said angrily, getting to his feet. "It's the middle of night, there's a dark wizard out to kill you, and you want to go wandering off on your own."

"He doesn't want to kill me. He wants nothing to do with me anymore, remember? And he's made sure I can do nothing to him either."

"That didn't mean it's safe! Just because he let you go doesn't mean him or his Death Eaters won't attack you if they come across you alone."

"I can look after myself."

"I might believe that if you hadn't spent a fortnight getting tortured!"

"That's—I wasn't alone anyway."

"Then who were you with? Draco? I know I said I don't trust him, but if that's where you're going I'd still rather you told us so we know where the hell you are."

"It doesn't matter! Just drop it!"

"I'm trying to look out for you, Harry! I'm your godfather, that's what I'm supposed to do."

"Well don't! I can look out for myself! I don't need you!" he said, pretending not to notice the hurt look on Sirius' face as he spun and stormed away. He already felt guilty for what he said, but he was still angry enough to not apologise. He wasn't even really angry at Sirius, he was just angry at the whole situation, at having to keep new secrets and he was wondering if letting Snape live was even a good idea and everything was just so messed up—

There was no warning tingle in his arm this time, or if there was he was too worked up to notice it. One moment he was stomping up the stairs, the next thing he was on the floor feeling a familiar weakness, and someone was touching his face. He jerked away from them, heard the thud of a body hitting something hard, closely followed by a grunt of pain. He turned to look and tried to push himself up at the same time, but pain lashed through his arm and his vision swam and then went black.

He came around again just a few seconds later. He sat up, gasping as pain shot through his arm again, and looked down to see his wrist twisted oddly, clearly broken. He Wished it fixed and winced as it snapped back into place, then rotated it, testing it was alright as he looked up. He was back in the living room and Sirius was sat against the far wall, one hand gingerly probing the back of his head, the other clutching at his ribs as he breathed harshly.

"Sirius!" He crawled over, kneeling by him, hovering worriedly. "Sirius, I'm sorry! I didn't mean to, I swear. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Are you—let me…" He got up on his knees, laying his hand over the one Sirius had on the back of his head, apologising again when he winced, then made a Wish. There were limits to his healing, but this seemed to work.

"Oh," Sirius said softly. "Ohh, that's better."

Harry sat back on his heels, drawing his hand away. "I'm sorry."

"Stop apologising, kid, you sound like a broken record."

He bit back another apology, watching him nervously. Sirius leant his head back, resting it against the wall and let his hand slip away from his ribs as he looked at Harry.

"Going to fix yourself?"

"I did," he said, lifting his hand, but Sirius pointed to his head and Harry reached up to touch it, surprised to find blood dripping down from a cut just above his hairline. He fixed it easily, wiped the blood away, and focused on Sirius again.

"I'm—"

"Don't say sorry again. I heard you the first five times."

"I didn't mean it when I said I don't need you," he said instead. "I do. And I didn't mean to hurt you," he added, then felt tears well up in his eyes. He rubbed at them angrily, annoyed with himself, and pulled away when Sirius reached for him.

"Harry, it's alright. It was an accident and I'm fine."

"It's not that. I'm—I don't know why—I can't help it," he said angrily, staring at his knees and unable to hold back the tears.

"You've had a rough time, kid, it's alright to cry."

Harry said nothing, biting his wobbling lip. He didn't want to cry. Crying meant thinking about why he was crying, and he was trying really hard not to do that. But he hadn't slept properly in weeks, he was having nightmares and even during the day he would get suddenly struck by a vividly unpleasant memory completely out of the blue, and he felt constantly teetering on the edge of panic and dreaded the day when the mark on his arm burned, and all he wanted to do was run away but for once in his life he couldn't because Voldemort would kill all his friends and Sirius, but apparently not James and he couldn't even tell anyone that James was spying on them or everyone would die, and in less than two years _he_ was going to die and it would all be for nothing because he'd sold his soul for the power to protect himself and he couldn't even do that, and—

"Harry," Sirius said, his voice a choked whisper, and Harry looked up to see tears in his eyes too. He opened his arms and Harry leant into him, pressing his face against his chest and sobbed into his shirt. He heard James come over to sit on Sirius' other side, but didn't look up, just cried himself into an exhausted sleep.

It didn't make him feel better.

* * *

With Dobby close on hand, the Assistant went to the safe house, stunned Yaxley, packed a suitcase, and then snuck into Hogwarts and the Chamber of Secrets. He magicked up a decent-sized prison cell—as far as prison cells went—complete with a reasonably comfortable bed, a table to sit at, a shower and toilet hooked up to the school plumbing, and some curtains hanging over the bars to brighten the place up. He put a muting spell on the man, turned his back, and only then woke Yaxley up.

"Dobby, meet Preston Yaxley, the man you'll be looking after for the foreseeable future."

"Dobby is glad to meets you, sir."

Yaxley glared at him like he'd like nothing more than to kick him.

"As you can see, he's mute. He can relay his wants and needs to you through writing," he said, waving his hand at the table where he'd left parchment, a bottle of ink, and a quill. "It's very important that you do not let me ever read anything he writes. If there is some kind of emergency and he's written something that you think I need to see, tell me it or, if you really have to, re-write it yourself and give it to me, understand?"

"Dobby understands Assistant, sir."

"Good. You've got the rest of your orders, but if you're ever unsure of anything, come find me. Keeping him restrained but alive is of utmost importance, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't be comfortable. Welcome to the Chamber of Secrets, Preston," he said without looking around, walking away and lifting his hand in a wave. "I hope you enjoy your stay."

He left the Chamber of Secrets, but he stayed within Hogwarts, heading up to the headteacher's office, turning himself invisible so he could slip past ghosts, portraits, and teachers. The office itself was empty when he got up there, but a couple of portraits disappeared from their frames when he made himself visible, including Phineas Nigellus, so he was content to wait.

He settled into one of the chairs before the desk, transfiguring it into something easier to relax in. Then he transfigured it a bit more so he could recline. Then he transfigured it to be even comfier.

The next thing he knew, Albus Dumbledore was looking down at him with an expression like he was debating whether to pour a bucket of water over his head.

"Are you quite comfy there?"

The Assistant yawned. "Had better, had worse."

"You realise that I had ample opportunity to disarm and overpower you just now," Dumbledore said, moving around the desk. He stopped by Fawkes' perch and stroked the phoenix, who let out a trill cry that made the Assistant shudder slightly, then moved on to settle into his chair.

The Assistant transfigured his own seat back to normal. "You couldn't have disarmed me because I have nothing to be disarmed of. Unless you mean it in the very literal sense, in which case, fair enough and thanks for not."

"You carry no weapons at all?"

"I am a weapon."

"Unless your magic is suppressed."

"Yeah, well," the Assistant said with a shrug. "In that case I figure they deserve the chance. I mean, it's no fun if I can just kerb stomp everyone all the time."

"Is that what this is to you? Fun? A game?"

"What? Life? No, not really."

"The war."

The Assistant shrugged. "Let's just say I don't look at it the same way you or Voldemort do."

"Evidently. Apparently you feel free to aid or hinder both sides, to save some while letting others get hurt or killed when you have the power to prevent it all, to—"

"Stop," the Assistant interrupted, glaring across the desk at him. "Let me be very clear, Albus: I cannot save everyone. I may be powerful, and I have a great deal of information that gives me an advantage over others, but I am no god. Oft times I am in a position that puts me at less advantage than you to help people. And even if I could save everyone, why should that be my job? Why should I save the world? And don't you dare go Uncle Ben on me, or I swear—"

"Uncle Ben?" Dumbledore repeated blankly.

"You never read _Spiderman_ , I guess. It's a Muggle comic."

"I've heard of it. I still don't understand the reference."

"There's a character in it called Uncle Ben. He's got a line that goes 'with great power comes great responsibility'."

"I'm familiar with the sentiment. You do not believe it?"

"I believe I've got a right to live my life how I like without people telling me I should be doing certain things just because I can."

Dumbledore shook his head sadly. "I cannot agree with that."

"Funny, because I don't see you sitting in the Minister's office, which everyone's been saying you should do since you kicked Grindlewald's arse up and down Europe."

Dumbledore frowned at his description, but all he said was, "Just because the people believe I would be a good minister does not make it true."

"And just because you believe I should act as the second coming of Merlin doesn't mean I should."

"I do not think that."

The Assistant shrugged. "Well, whatever. Point is you don't like my actions thus far because they don't fall in with yours."

"I don't like your actions thus far because they've led to harm and death."

The Assistant looked at him, not blinking under the stare of his judging blue gaze. "You want to blame me for Remus and Severus?"

"I'm well aware of the part you played in last Thursday's events."

The Assistant laughed. "Well aware. I like that. Sure you are."

"You restrained the hostages. You stood by and watched the events of the night and did nothing to help."

"Should have let them all rugby tackle Voldemort, should I? C'mon, even if I'd released Harry from his chains, you know it'd have done no good to kill Voldemort. Wouldn't have killed him for good."

"But you choose to betray him now? I assume that's what that little charade in the Ministry of Magic was about earlier. You don't do things subtly, do you?"

"Looks that way, doesn't it?"

"Do not play with me… Harry."

The Assistant grimaced, glanced away. "Don't call me that."

"It's your name, is it not?"

"That doesn't mean I want you using it."

"There's no one but us to hear it."

The Assistant glared at him. "It's nothing to do with that. I simply don't like people calling me by my name. You can call me literally any other name you like, I've used dozens in my time, but not that."

"Why?"

"Because I said so. If you're going to push this, I will walk out, Albus, and you don't want me to walk out. I have information you need, especially now Severus is dead. You've not got a spy in Voldemort's ranks anymore."

For a few seconds, they just stared at each other, both unwilling to back down, but eventually Dumbledore sighed.

"Very well, as you wish."

"Thank you," the Assistant said stiffly. "And yes, I'm betraying him."

"Why?"

"He killed Severus."

"Whom you loved."

"Urgh. No."

Dumbledore smiled. "Not romantically. Paternally."

"Y'know," the Assistant said, "some people would say that's an awfully strange thing to say when he was only a couple of years older than me."

"Am I wrong?"

"Yes," the Assistant said, and took a moment to relish the look on Dumbledore's face before conceding, "But your reason for making such a claim isn't wrong."

They had another brief staring contest before Dumbledore said, "Assistant, if you intend to betray Voldemort and bring information to me, you are going to have to be upfront, honest, and straightforward."

The Assistant wrinkled his nose. "'Spose. I do enjoy being cryptic. You know how much fun it is."

"If we are both cryptic, it will make conversations long and difficult, and I am an old man."

"Younger than me. Oh, come on," he said with a roll of his eyes at Dumbledore's sceptical look. "Fine, fine, let's be straightforward. I'm a time traveller. Happy now?"

"Immensely," Dumbledore said, and smiled. The Assistant grunted. "But there's more to it than that. You have been around since nineteen eighty-one, at the latest, yet you claim to be older than I am. You're in a reset time loop."

The Assistant gave a bow of admission, then raised his hands and linked his fingers behind his head. "How long since you figured it out?"

"I've had my suspicions that you were a time traveller since Harry first told me about you. A few of your comments the day you helped Peter Pettigrew escape added to it, but I wasn't certain until Harry told me your name."

"Fair enough. But just so you know, I'm not the Harry Evans you know, never was. Never even used that name."

Dumbledore looked concerned. "You've always refused your given name?"

"Oh, no, I didn't mean that. I mean I went by Snape, not Evans."

"That is curious," Dumbledore said, watching him over his glasses. "I think it's time you told me about your background, and showed me your true face."

The Assistant's face morphed into his true appearance and he sat silently for a minute as Dumbledore inspected him, gaze lingering on the lightning bolt scar on his forehead, on the two real eyes, the sharp line of his cheekbones and jaw that didn't come from Snape or Lily, the scar along his jaw.

Dumbledore traced a finger along his own jaw, expression questioning.

"I expressed an opinion one of the other Death Eater's didn't like."

Dumbledore lowered his hand. "You lied to me."

"How's that?"

"You're a dimension traveller. Time cannot be changed so much to account for the differences between you and Harry Evans."

The Assistant rolled his eyes. "Semantics, Albus. Besides, technically I'm both. Reset loop, remember? I get the joy of jumping dimensions and seeing the same nineteen years playing over and over again."

"Nineteen years? Precisely?"

"Not quite. Fifth of November seventy-nine to first of May ninety-eight."

"How long have you been trapped in the loop?"

The Assistant shrugged, lowering his hands to rest on the arms of the chair. "Lost count a long time ago. Too long, I can tell you that."

"You've no idea how to break it?"

"I've been told by a semi-reliable source that it involves the death of Voldemort. Unfortunately the source was a bit vague on the details of exactly how Voldemort was meant to die, but I can tell you that it's not by shooting, burning, the Killing Curse, suffocation, or stabbing him repeatedly and screaming vulgar obscenities then pissing on his dead body. Time loops tend to stretch the boundaries of one's sanity," he added at Dumbledore's startled look. "Also I might have been a little bit drunk. But before you mention the Horcruxes, I know about all those and had them destroyed before I stabbed him. I am beginning to think that my source did in fact lie to me."

Dumbledore's expression didn't change but he reached into his robe pocket and pulled out a ring and a slip of parchment, laying them on the desk between them. The ring was gold with a large black stone set into it. The Assistant reached forward and picked up the parchment. The only thing on it was a simply drawn smiley face.

"This is your work, then," Dumbledore said.

"Yup."

"And the real Horcrux?"

"Safe."

"But not destroyed."

"I'm working a theory of only letting my counterpart destroy the Horcruxes."

"Then you've failed. One of them has already been destroyed by Severus."

"The diary? Bugger." He thought for a moment, then shrugged. "Alright, lets work with the idea of only his blood line, so Harry gets the rest."

"Do you know where the rest are?"

"Course I do. Not telling you though."

"Why?"

"One—see what I just said about Harry destroying them? Two—even if that wasn't an issue, do you even have a way to destroy them? I'm not seeing Gryffindor's sword and did you harvest the basilisk before getting rid of it?"

"Severus had," Dumbledore said, "but there was an accident in his store cupboard earlier this year and all the venom was lost. What of Gryffindor's sword? You expected me to have it?"

"No, but you have on occasion. Not because it comes to you, mind, so don't go getting a big head. But it appears to the kid sometimes."

"Harry? He's a Slytherin."

"Sure, but other Harrys aren't."

"Were you?" Dumbledore asked.

"What do you think?"

"I admit I cannot imagine you anywhere else. But we've gone on a tangent. You refuse to bring the Horcruxes to me?"

The Assistant nodded once. "But before you go getting upset, I'll make you a deal: you let me know when you've told Harry about them, and figured out a way to destroy them, and I'll bring them over."

Dumbledore didn't look happy, but he didn't argue with it. "And in the meantime?"

"I spy for you. Tell you all Voldemort's dirty little secrets. Gives me something to do."

"After what you did today, Voldemort will kill you on sight. Why did you do that, might I ask?"

"One—Major case of melodrama. Two—Umbridge is a bitch, now everyone knows it and Harry can go back to school. Three—I want him to know I'm not working for him anymore. Besides, he doesn't need to see me for me to spy on him; I've got methods of information gathering that are far more reliable."

"If I'm to trust what you give me, then I want to know more about you."

The Assistant shrugged. "Figured as much. You got something to wet the mouth while we're at it?"

Dumbledore fetched a bottle of mead and a couple of glasses and poured them both some, then the Assistant told him his story.

By the time he was done, much of Dumbledore's suspicion was replaced by pity.

"You were Bound in Animancupium by your own adoptive father?"

The Assistant shrugged. "Voldemort's a distrustful bastard and Lucius is nothing if not loyal. He did as he was told, and I did as I was told."

"I doubt you were told to go back in time."

The Assistant smiled. "I was never told not to."

"Does Voldemort—the Voldemort of this timeline—know all this?"

"Yes. Well, he did. I went and fiddled a bit with his memory. Also I might have given him a slightly falsified version of the ending."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I might have told him that the reason I went back in time was because the Muggles in my timeline found out about magic and planned to use nuclear weapons against Voldemort, and implied that the reason for my turning back time was to prevent that happening."

"Did your war get that bad?"

"There was no war in my world, there was just a takeover. Dumbledore and his lot never stood a chance, not once I'd joined the Death Eaters. But no, the Muggles never actually threatened to go nuclear."

"You think very highly of yourself," Dumbledore remarked. "We've held our own against you in this timeline."

The Assistant smiled humourlessly. "I wasn't fighting in earnest this time. I've barely lifted a finger to help either side. Trust me, Albus, if I was really on Voldemort's side, this war would have been over before it ever began." Dumbledore still looked sceptical, so the Assistant said, "Albus, when I was fourteen, I walked into Hogwarts beside Voldemort with barely a dozen Death Eaters behind me and murdered forty people with a single wave of my hand."

He heard a sharp intake of breath. "Why?"

The Assistant met Dumbledore's angry gaze with his own. "Because they stood beside you and Voldemort told me to kill them for it. Don't look at me like that, Albus. Those people were my classmates. Draco was my _brother_. I told you: I'm a weapon, and I had no choice but to kill whoever Voldemort pointed me at. I couldn't fight his orders like I can fight your Voldemort."

"But you joined him again," Dumbledore said, some anger still in his voice. "You joined him in this timeline instead of standing against him. You claim to have so much power, yet you didn't stop this war before it began, and even now you say you'll give me information but not put an end to things yourself."

The Assistant was on his feet without even realising it, hands slamming down on the desk.

"Why should I?" he snarled. "This isn't my war, it's yours. This isn't even my world, I'm just a traveller here, passing through. Anything I do, I do to pass the time. Any loyalties I give are as tenuous as a leaf on a tree."

"And you expect me to believe you'll spy for me now?" Dumbledore said quietly. He did a remarkable job of looking unruffled by the Assistant's outburst.

The Assistant sat down. "He killed Severus. He threatened Draco and treated Harry very, very poorly. Some things even I won't ignore."

"Why not? It's not your Severus or your Draco. Why should you care for them?"

The Assistant said nothing.

"Is this guilt?"

"So what if it is?"

"Why for Severus? You killed your Draco," Dumbledore said when the Assistant said nothing. "I understand that. But you said your father's death was an accident."

The Assistant looked away. "It was an accident I caused. Don't ask," he added sharply. "I'm not talking about that. You don't get to know everything about me just because I'm switching sides, Albus."

Dumbledore frowned at that, but he let it go. "Tell me why you joined Voldemort in this timeline. If I'm to believe you'll betray him now, I want to know why you went to him in the first place."

"I didn't, really. He captured me, last July. Tortured me for a bit so I decided to just go with it." He sighed wearily, slumping in his chair. "I'm old, Albus. I've lived a lot of timelines. I've seen a lot of things happen over and over again and been unable to stop it, or I've stopped it only to find out something worse happens instead.

"You've got to realise that doing that—living this shit repeatedly and failing to break the loop—it gets to you. Sometimes I just can't be fucked to fight. Occasionally I give myself up to drink or drugs or whatever other self-destructive behaviour takes my fancy, but sometimes it's just a matter of doing whatever the life lends me to do.

"I didn't plan to become a major player in this timeline—just fiddle here and there, like with the Stone and Wormtail—but Voldemort tricked me into a trap last summer, stripped my powers and said either I joined him or I died. I didn't fancy starting my time loop over just then, so I went with it." He paused, sighed, then added, "And then he transferred my Bond and I had no choice."

Dumbledore frowned, leaning forwards. "I thought Animancupium was unbreakable."

"It is, but it can still be transferred. Without the Master's input, I might add, at least when the Slave in question is a wizard. You're aware it was designed to be used on Muggles?"

"I am, though I confess that's all I know of it. It's an archaic spell."

"Right, well when the Slave is magical their power twists the magic of the spell. It makes it deadly, for one. When a Master dies, the magic of the Bond snaps; when the Slave is a wizard, their magic is intrinsically interwoven with the magic of the spell and the force of it breaking ripples back and kills them. It also makes it so their Bond can be transferred from Master to Master without the current Master's input, so Voldemort was able to get one of his Death Eaters to use the ritual and take my Bond, leaving me unable to disobey him."

"Voldemort didn't take it himself?"

"A broken soul can be neither Master nor Slave in Animancupium. His soul is far too damaged to take part. He gave me to one of the Death Eaters."

"Preston Yaxley."

The Assistant said nothing. He reached for the bottle of mead and refilled his glass, then gestured to Dumbledore's in silent question before setting the bottle aside when Dumbledore shook his head.

"Would I be right in thinking," Dumbledore said as the Assistant sipped at his mead, "that even with the Animancupium you were still difficult to control?"

"I am naturally rebellious. It drives people up the wall."

"I can imagine. But it explains why Voldemort didn't have the Animancupium used on Harry. Presumably he thought Harry would be just as difficult to control."

"Maybe," the Assistant said with a shrug. "Not like we talked about it and I don't know the kid well enough to say what he'd have been like if he was Bound."

"So where is Preston now?"

"Safe."

"From whom?"

"Everyone."

"If you wish to transfer—"

"No."

"You would rather stay Bound to a Death Eater? One who I know has treated you extremely poorly."

"Doesn't matter; I might have turned on Voldemort, but my Master is still mine and nothing he does will make me want to have anyone else. Magic of the Bond."

Dumbledore looked doubtful. "Remus told me how he and Sirius found you the day they broke into your home. You prefer to continue putting up with that than transfer your Bond?"

"Yes. I mean, don't get me wrong, I don't enjoy getting the shit beat out of me, but… look, you want to know how bad this loyalty is? The day Severus died, Preston nearly killed me. I pushed his temper until he attacked me bad enough to break my ribs and puncture my lungs. I was choking on my own blood, Albus, and I wasn't allowed to heal myself until he gave me permission." He paused to let that sink in, then said, "But I didn't escape his orders until now. I had to go to great lengths to free myself from the orders he'd given me, but it took Severus dying to make me do that, not getting the shit beat out of me. That's how badly the Bond enforces my loyalty. Nothing will ever make me want to transfer it."

"I am sorry," Dumbledore said earnestly.

The Assistant shrugged. "I deal with it. Got no choice. Besides, I would rather stay Bound to a man who's currently mute, locked away where no one but I can get to him, and under a compulsion to keep him from committing suicide. He's not a danger to me right now, which means he can't make me a danger to anyone else and he can't stop me revealing lots of Voldemort's nasty little secrets."

Dumbledore straightened, his gaze growing intense, attention focused. "How am I to know that what you tell me is true? If you are indeed bound to obey Voldemort, then this could be nothing more than a scheme to feed me false information."

"It'd be a nice little plan, wouldn't it? But I understand your scepticism, so for now I'll give you one—the big one—and when you've confirmed the truth of it and know I'm being honest, I'll tell you more."

"Then tell me."

"James Potter is Bound in Animancupium to Lucius. He's not under the Word of Death Curse, he's being used as a spy against you, and this time he doesn't even know it."


	33. Chapter 33

**Chapter 33**

"What do you mean 'this time'?" Albus demanded, and didn't appreciate the Assistant's pitying look.

"I mean a year ago, Lucius and Voldemort sent him back to you and told him to spy on the Order."

Albus buried his face in his hands. "Severus was right. I sent him to his death."

The Assistant said nothing. Albus pulled himself together and lowered his hands.

"But this time? You said James doesn't know?"

The Assistant looked down at his hands, picking at a nail. "You know James hurt himself sometime in the past year? Cut himself?"

Albus nodded. Remus had reported that incident.

"That's the Animancupium. Being apart from his Master started to get to him. To be honest, I'm surprised it hit him so hard after being together for so long, but I'm guessing there was some psychological crap going on, Stockholm or something. Anyway, Lucius decided James might do better if he didn't know about the Bond, and they were concerned about you figuring things out, so they put a Memory Charm on him."

"Will James do better like that?"

The Assistant shook his head. "The Animancupium is soul magic. You can't memory charm that away. James'll still feel the pull towards Lucius, he just won't understand what any of it means, and if anything, he's more likely to hurt himself now he's already shown an inclination towards it."

Albus sighed. What a mess. "Is there anything you can suggest to help him?"

"Honestly? Send him back to Lucius."

"That's not possible," Albus said coldly.

"Why? Because it doesn't suit your sensibilities?" the Assistant mocked.

"You would have me send him back to a man who locked him in a cellar for fourteen years and tortured him."

"Permanently keeping them separated would be a worse torture," the Assistant snapped. "And I can promise you, you would have to lock James up to keep him from going back of his own accord, and if you managed that, eventually he'd kill himself."

"You can't be serious."

"I am," the Assistant said firmly. "I told you, this is soul magic, Albus. It's the most powerful magic known to man, even more than the power of love that you believe in so strongly. If you want to do what's best for James, send him back to Lucius."

* * *

When Harry first woke, he thought it was because of a nightmare because he was in pain, then he realised the pain was a lot stronger than the echoes of his nightmares, and focused on his left arm. Even in his sleep his right hand ended up grabbing his forearm tightly, but it took another moment before he realised what it was.

The Dark Mark was burning.

He was in his bed, which he didn't remember going to last night, and the first light of dawn was pushing through his curtains. Padfoot was curled up at the end, and Prongs was on the floor, both still asleep. It was always a little unnerving to have Prongs inside; his antlers were a bit scary.

 _You're stalling._

He was. He Wished for Sirius and James not to wake and carefully climbed out of bed. He was undressed to his boxers and he quickly conjured some plain black robes (his only black robes were his school ones, and he didn't want to turn up in those), pulled them on, and Wished for Snape's Death Eater mask before leaving. He felt a bit guilty for leaving Sirius and James again, but they would sleep until he Wished otherwise so were none the wiser. It was the easiest thing to do.

His first attempt to teleport was a failure. When he'd first arrived at Hogwarts, he'd tried to teleport and discovered that doing so was like throwing himself against a brick wall, which he later realised was the result of Anti-Apparition Spells. The same thing happened here.

Remembering the outside of the hospital he'd been held captive in, he teleported to it. It worked this time and he appeared to find other black-robed figures popping into existence. Glad no one else was exchanging a word so he wouldn't feel awkward about not speaking, he followed them inside. They all went to the large room where Harry had been marked, where others were already waiting for them. Voldemort was at the centre and everyone who entered approached him, knelt, and kissed his feet before backing to stand again.

Harry did the same, wondering if the others felt as sickly ashamed of doing it as he did. When he'd risen and backed away, wondering if it mattered where in the circle he stood, someone stepped close and he jerked away.

"You stand by me," Antonin's voice said from behind the mask. Harry wondered how he knew who Harry was, but didn't ask, just moved to stand beside Antonin as he took his place. "Learn your position and remember it."

Harry wondered how he was supposed to remember where to stand in a circle of other black-clad people, but as the movement settled he realised that while everyone's mask was some mix of white, silver, and grey, none of the designs were exactly the same. He tried to examine Antonin's mask, but everyone else was looking at Voldemort and he didn't want to stand out so he looked forward as well.

When the only gap left in the circle was a space big enough for two people, on Harry's right, Voldemort slowly walked before them, wand out and fingers of his left hand stroking it as he looked at them all. Nagini slithered behind them and Harry wondered if everyone else felt as wary of her as they did of Voldemort, or if it was more terrifying because he could understand her hisses about which of them smelt good and how hungry she was.

"One of our number has betrayed us," Voldemort finally spoke, and Harry forgot about Nagini as his blood turned to ice in his veins.

 _Fuck._

He closed his eyes behind his mask. Voldemort knew. He probably had someone following Harry. It must have been the Assistant, he was the only one that could possibly break Harry's Wishes. God, he was such an idiot. He never should have let Snape live in the first place. Now he was going to be tortured all over again and his friends and Sirius and James—or not, if Snape were right—would die, and he hadn't even lasted a full week.

"For those of you that have not heard," Voldemort went on, "I was in the Ministry of Magic last night."

Harry's eyes snapped open. Around him, a few others Death Eaters shuffled.

"I walked through, dispatching my enemies with ease yet harming and killing no one, insulted my parents, revealed the efforts of a previously unsuspected servant, and kissed a woman."

There was more shuffling. Someone coughed.

 _The Assistant,_ sighed the voice irritably. _Overpowered and flashy. Who else would it be?_

Harry almost sighed with relief.

"In case any of you are completely stupid," Voldemort said, his voice now much angrier, "that was not me. The man you all know as the Assistant has betrayed me and he has kidnapped Preston Yaxley."

He stopped at the gap beside Harry. Harry fought the urge to edge away; his scar ached just from being near him. Voldemort stared at the space for a while, long enough for the silence to become uncomfortable, and then he turned to look at them all again.

"The Assistant is a traitor. Anyone who brings me his head will be well rewarded. Preston is to be brought to me alive and unharmed, unless he proves himself a traitor also."

There was a soft murmur of noise then. Harry got the impression that hunting down traitors was a relished sport. Voldemort let it go on for only a brief moment before saying, "You're dismissed, all except you."

He pointed at Harry, and all the fear from before came rushing right back. He stayed where he was as everyone else bowed and left until only he and Voldemort remained.

"Remove your mask, Harry."

Wishing away his fearful sweat, Harry took the mask from his face. Voldemort held out a hand and Harry passed it over, watching him examine it.

"This was Severus'."

It wasn't a question, but Voldemort glanced up at him so Harry said, "Antonin didn't give me one. I wasn't sure…"

"Where did you get it?"

"I found it on my desk one day, with a note. From the Assistant."

"Have you seen him?"

"Yes," Harry answered after only the briefest hesitation. He wasn't sure what Voldemort's reaction would be, but he was sure that he wouldn't want to be discovered lying. "The day of Snape's funeral. He came to tell me about Tyler's—my friend's—real dad."

"That was all?"

"Yes," he said, and very carefully didn't think about runes and tattoos.

Voldemort handed the mask back. "He has shown a fondness for you before. I expect you to use that to your advantage. If he shows himself to you, you will bring him to me—alive."

There was a pause, and Harry realised he was expected to speak. "Yes, my lord."

Nagini hissed, just a wordless noise, and started to slither a closer circle around Harry, who glanced down warily at her.

"I mentioned," Voldemort said, fingering his wand, "that the Assistant revealed the work of a previously unknown public servant."

"Um, yes?" Harry said, confused.

"That servant was Dolores Umbridge."

 _I'm not even surprised._

"The work she did for me was getting you expelled."

The windows blew out. Voldemort's wand whipped forward to point unquivering at Harry's face.

"Remember who you serve now, Harry," he said warningly.

Harry fixed the windows. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to."

Voldemort's wand didn't lower. "Undoubtedly Dumbledore will see to your reinstatement. You'd have served me well without school to take your time, but can be used to my benefit. Make no mistake, however: even as a Hogwarts student I expect you to serve me well."

 _I'm not sure how I feel about this,_ the voice said.

"Yes, my lord."

"Then you're dismissed."

* * *

Harry didn't go straight home, but stopped by Spinner's End. He didn't intend to stay long, but when he appeared in the living room, it was trashed—books all over the floor, several bookcases splintered and broken, the furniture thrown over, broken glass on the floor. Snape lay amidst it all and at first Harry thought he was dead, but then he grunted like a pig with a stuffed nose and Harry realised he was sleeping.

Harry knelt, shaking Snape's shoulder, and the man woke abruptly, lashing out wildly and then stopping. He groaned, eyes closing again and face twisting with pain.

"What's wrong?" Harry asked, looking him over. Snape had some minor cuts on his hands, but no other injuries Harry could see. "Are you hurt?"

"I think my head is going to explode," Snape said weakly. He tried to open his eyes, but grimaced and closed them again. "I think there's some Hangover Reliever in the bathroom."

"A—? You got _drunk_?" Harry said incredulously while the voice cackled in his head. "Did you do all this? I thought you'd been attacked!"

Snape winced. "Please don't shout at me."

Harry scowled down at him, but got up and went to find the Hangover Reliever. There were a few unlabelled vials in the bathroom cabinet so he took them all and let Snape pick out the right one. After, he fixed up the living room while Snape staggered to his feet and went to use the toilet. When he came back down, the room was back to normal.

"What are you doing here?" Snape asked, voice a little gruffer than usual. He hadn't shaved and it was a strange look on him. Not a very good one, either. "You said you wouldn't be back for a couple of days."

"I got summoned," Harry said, and Snape straightened up from leaning against the entry way to the stairs.

"What did he ask you to do?"

"The Assistant's turned traitor and he said he'd reward anyone that killed him, but he said if I find him then I should bring him in alive."

Snape grunted. "Probably wants to torture him. Never got to give me a traitor's death."

Harry wasn't sure he wanted to know, but couldn't resist asking, "What's a traitor's death?"

But all Snape said was, "Painful. Thank you," he added, gesturing vaguely around the repaired room.

"Why'd you break it all anyway?"

Snape turned away from him, going to the kitchen. Harry followed, standing in the doorway while Snape set about making himself some coffee. When he didn't answer, Harry repeated the question and Snape sighed irritably.

"You think you're the only one that gets to break things when they're upset?"

"Why were you upset?"

"After the week I had, I have every right to be upset."

"You've been unconscious for almost a week."

"The week before then."

Harry looked down at his feet, toeing at the line where the carpet met linoleum. "Did it make you feel better?"

"Not really."

"What about getting drunk? Did that help?"

There was a pause and he glanced up to find Snape looking at him, his mouth tight in a frown.

"Don't use drink to deal with what happened to you," he said quietly.

"You did."

"I'm a bad example, I'd have thought you realised that by now. You don't want to take after me."

"I want to feel better," Harry muttered, looking away again. There was an uncomfortable weirdness in Snape having seen what happened to him, and vice versa, but it meant there was one person who knew exactly what Harry was going through now.

"Alcohol doesn't make you feel better, it just makes you forget for a little while, if you drink enough of it."

"Better than nothing."

"You would be better off seeing a therapist."

 _NO,_ the voice snarled, and Harry winced.

"Which you clearly don't like," Snape said, and Harry shrugged. "You don't have to tell them about the voice. You can just talk about… what you went through."

"I don't want to talk about it," Harry said, while the voice muttered, _We're not risking it._ "I just want to stop thinking about it."

Snape finished making his coffee and lifted it, blowing at the top then taking a sip that still made him wince slightly. He stared down into it as he spoke. "It wouldn't help to do that. I've seen it tried—students taking memory potions to forget a trauma. You can erase a memory, but you can't erase what it does to your psyche."

"But at least if I forgot then the nightmares—" Harry tried, but Snape shook his head.

"You won't dream of exactly what happened, but some part of your subconscious will know what happened and you'll still have nightmares."

Harry wrapped his arms around himself. "I haven't slept properly since they took me," he said, hearing his voice wobble. "I keep waking up terrified and sometimes… it's like I have nightmares even when I'm awake. I'll just be doing something and all of a sudden I remember being in that room and… and…"

He broke off, breath hitching, shifting a hand to his chest and looking at Snape with terror. It was happening again—the pain in his chest, the trouble breathing, the overwhelming fear. He couldn't speak, just leant against the door frame and slid down to his knees, trembling. He tried to stop it, tried to tell himself there was nothing for him to be afraid of right then, but he still saw the doorframe and cupboards start to rot which only made his panic worse as he tried not to destroy the house around him.

Snape looked startled and put down his coffee to come over and crouch in front of him.

"Harry?"

He couldn't answer, could only look at Snape and hope the pleading fear showed in his eyes. He was dying, rotting away from the inside just like the house. His heart was breaking through his very chest and he couldn't breathe and God help him he didn't want to die like this, not terrified, not with only Snape beside him, not with the voice screaming distantly inside his mind—

Snape touched his chin then wrenched his hand away with a hiss, fingers singed. He didn't try again, just ducked his head to catch Harry's gaze.

"Harry, look at me," he said calmly, dark eyes boring into Harry's. "Just look at me."

Harry did, and felt a gentle presence in his mind. His head felt scrambled and twisted, but as he kept staring into Snape's eyes his thoughts settled and soothed. As his head calmed, his breathing steadied and the pain in his chest eased until he no longer felt like he was dying, and the rot stopped progressing.

The presence in his mind withdrew. Harry took a few deep, shaky breaths, and repaired the damage he'd done.

"What did you do?"

"Legilimency. You were having a panic attack. It would have passed on its own, but I helped speed it along before you completely ruined my house."

"I felt like I was dying. I thought my heart would burst. What's wrong with me? I have enough sickness, I don't need more."

"You're not sick," Snape said, grimacing slightly as he shifted to sit against the kitchen cabinets, stretching his legs out in front of him. "A panic attack is not like epilepsy. It's exactly what it says—an attack of panic. Overwhelming fear and anxiety so strong it's debilitating. They're not uncommon in people who have suffered a trauma."

"How do I stop it? I don't want it to happen again."

Snape side-eyed him. "You've never had one before this summer?"

"No. I mean, I got pretty worked up several times before my OWLs and Sirius or Remus or James had to calm me down, but I never had anything—actually, once," he remembered. "When Dumbledore put those cuffs on me before sending me back to the Dursleys. I didn't rot things then, but I felt the same—the pain in my chest and I couldn't breathe until he gave me a Calming Draught."

Snape nodded as if he'd expected it. "Minor panic attacks, except the incident with the headmaster. This one was a lot more severe; your fear and anxiety over OWLs wasn't half as strong as the anxiety of what happened to you while… It's likely they'll keep happening until you deal with it."

Harry closed his eyes even as tears filled them.

 _You're not seeing a shrink._

"It's not fair," he whispered. "Why'd it have to be me? Why do I have to be the Boy Who Lived? Why couldn't he have attacked Neville? Neville's the pureblood." He knew he wasn't being fair, wishing this on his friend, but right then he didn't care. "I wasn't special. My mum wasn't special. Neville's parents were Aurors, he should have killed them and then I could have grown up with Mum and everything would have been happy and I wouldn't… I wouldn't have been…"

He sobbed, turning his face away from Snape, hating what had happened to him and hating himself for saying these things.

"You're the one with the power," Snape said quietly, faintly apologetic. "Like it or not, you are special."

"I w-w-wasn't," he sobbed. "Not then."

 _You're not…_

"What do you mean?"

 _Are you really going to tell him? Do you trust him with this?_

"I didn't have my magic then."

"What are you talking about?"

Harry pressed his forehead against the doorframe, keeping his eyes closed. He hiccupped once, then said, "After my uncle put me in the hospital, I summoned a demon and made a deal with it to get my Wish Magic."

There was a pause, then: "Is this a joke?"

Harry shook his head. "In two years, a hellhound will hunt me down and kill me, and then my soul goes to hell."

Snape reached for him and Harry flinched violently, and Snape stopped short of grabbing him, his face pallid, expression caught between fear and anger.

"Tell me this is a joke. Tell me Black put you up to this!"

Harry just looked at him. He felt Snape's presence in his mind again. He started to Occlude this time, but then backed down and let him in, bringing forward the memory of his demon deal. Snape watched it play then withdrew and fell back against the cabinet again, this time drawing his knees up and burying both hands in his hair, elbows on his knees, staring down unseeing at his thighs.

Harry said nothing. He wiped his face dry and shifted off his knees to sit cross-legged. For several long minutes, they sat in surprisingly unawkward silence. For the first time in a long time, Harry's mind was calm and he was glad to take advantage of it. To not _think_ , to just let his thoughts drift aimless and barely realised. He felt oddly light at having finally told this secret to someone. At having actually said that he was going to die. It made it both terrifyingly real and yet somehow easier to accept.

After a while, when Snape showed no sign of moving, Harry got up, fetched and reheated his coffee, and brought it over. "Professor?"

Snape lifted his head, lowering his hands and looking around with a haunted expression that made Harry feel a little guilty for telling him about his deal. He held out the coffee. Snape blinked at it a couple of times then took it.

"It's not very accurate."

Harry frowned. "What's not?"

" 'Professor'. I'm not your teacher anymore."

"Suppose not. I dunno what else to call you though. Mister feels weird."

Snape stared down into his coffee. "I suppose it'd be too much to ask you call me 'father'."

Harry looked away. "I don't know."

A pause.

"Snape, then. Or Severus, if you like."

Harry nodded stiffly. "I should go."

"Harry."

He looked down. Snape looked up at him, dark eyes filled with promise.

"I'll find a way to save you. I've failed you in a lot of ways, but I will not let you die. I promise you that."

He looked and sounded so sincere that Harry felt almost awkward. He nodded again, muttered a thank you, and left.

As he'd planned, Sirius and James were still sleeping when he got back, though he realised he hadn't been gone all that long. It was barely past six o'clock. He thought of climbing back into bed, but couldn't face his nightmares so he took a shower, changed into fresh clothes, and made breakfast. As he ate, he thought about the revelation of that morning. The Assistant's betrayal. Preston Yaxley's kidnapping. His first real order as a Death Eater, to find them.

He didn't want to find the Assistant. With the Assistant and Harry himself on Voldemort's side, he seemed unbeatable. How could the Order, the Ministry, anyone stand up to them? If the Assistant had betrayed Voldemort, it evened the odds a little. Harry could reasonably claim he was unable to find him, given the Assistant's power.

But Yaxley… he had no excuses not to find him. Harry didn't particularly care to find a kidnapped paedophile, but if Voldemort started to wonder why Harry, with all his power, couldn't find one simple man, he might activate the Word of Death Curse. Finding him would look good for Harry; he was the new recruit, he probably needed to prove himself truly loyal.

Slightly reluctantly, he went upstairs, dug out some parchment and Interactive Ink, and made up a tracking arrow. It said Yaxley was 450 miles away. Not wanting to fly that distance, he added a simple compass marker to the arrow and it told him Yaxley was north of him. Harry teleported to Scotland and checked it again, then made a couple more short teleports before coming to Hogsmeade.

The arrow pointed straight to Hogwarts.

He followed it, letting it direct him through the empty castle until it brought him to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, pointing to the sink leading down to the Chamber of Secrets. He pocketed the arrow and headed down, making his way quickly through to the chamber.

A large cage was built at the centre. There was a small table, a bed, and even a shower and toilet inside, and laying on the bed, fast asleep, was Preston Yaxley and the Assistant. Both men were naked, the Assistant was blindfolded, and a house elf sat on the floor beside the bed, watching them unblinking.

 _That is really very creepy,_ the voice said with a tone of absolute disgust. Harry fully agreed.

He put the elf to sleep, conjured clothes onto the men, and Wished for neither of them to wake before vanishing a few of the bars so he could step into the cage. The Assistant clung to Yaxley like a squid and Harry had some trouble freeing him, but eventually he had him loose and levitated Yaxley out. He repaired the bars of the cage, wondering why the Assistant was caging himself but not about to wake him up and ask, and headed back out.

Once he was outside and off the school grounds, he made Yaxley forget the Assistant had been in the cage with him, then teleported to the hospital. He went to the large room first, but that was empty. A scan with his magic eye saw Voldemort on the middle floor, in the room where Harry had first been brought when the Assistant kidnapped him. He headed towards it, and on the way happened across Antonin coming out the kitchen.

"Well," Antonin said, sounding impressed and amused as he looked over Yaxley's floating, unconscious form. "I guess the Dark Lord's decision to recruit you wasn't completely worthless."

Harry didn't comment on that. "Can I go just go straight to Vol- the Dark Lord?"

Antonin nodded. "He's in the meeting room. I'll show you the way."

Harry knew where he was going, but let Antonin lead him anyway. Antonin knocked when they reached the meeting room, but he stood aside to let Harry enter first when Voldemort called for entry, then followed him into the dark room. Voldemort was seated in a throne-like armchair and he watched Harry approach.

"Bow to him," Antonin hissed quietly behind Harry, who set Yaxley down and did so.

"You work quickly, Harry," Voldemort said. "I am pleased. Where did you find him?"

"The Chamber of Secrets, at Hogwarts."

Something that might have been surprise, and then irritation, flickered across Voldemort's face, but it was hard to tell. All he said was, "It appears my ancestor's chambers have been desecrated yet again. Wake him."

Harry Wished and Yaxley stirred. It took a few moments for him to fully come around, and he hurriedly got to his feet and bowed to Voldemort when he realised where he was.

"My lord, I—"

Voldemort held up a hand. Yaxley went silent.

"I am sure there's a perfectly good reason—" Voldemort began, and then a thunderous crack and a blinding white light filled the room. Harry squeezed his eyes shut, heard someone collapse, Voldemort shout, and then hands gripped his head, firm on either side.

For once, his magic didn't lash out. He felt the familiar instinctive need to defend himself, but there was no accompanying blow of magic. He felt a surge of fear, of anger—

And then _bliss_. He heard himself sigh, but it sounded as if it came from somewhere else, and the hands left his head. He collapsed and lay on the wood floor. He couldn't focus, felt disconnected from himself, but it didn't feel bad. Quite the opposite—he'd never felt this good, this _amazing_ , in his entire life. There was an absent thought that he should get up and do something, but he wasn't sure what and he felt perfectly content to just lie there, pressing his palms flat to the cool floorboards, marvelling at the smoothness, the sleek sensation of highly polished wood under his fingertips. The voice started humming _London Bridge is Falling Down_.

"Preston is mine," he heard a voice say and turned his head. He saw Antonin on the floor as well, looking as if he felt the same intense pleasure that Harry did. Beyond, Voldemort hovered in midair, arms straight and stiff by his sides. The Assistant stood before him, Yaxley thrown unconscious over his shoulder.

"Do not send Harry after him again," the Assistant said.

"You will suffer, traitor," Voldemort hissed.

The Assistant pressed a hand to his chest, and Voldemort screamed. The sound rattled through Harry's skull but did nothing to dispel that intense pleasure burning in his mind.

The Assistant lowered his hand. "Preston is mine. Send Harry or anyone else after him again, and I will decimate your ranks so much you will never recover from the loss, Tom. I will burn every last person that calls themself your follower, and I will destroy your pet snake too."

He flicked his hand, there were multiple simultaneous cracks, and Voldemort dropped to the floor like a limp ragdoll, limbs snapped. The Assistant looked around, gave one of his salutes, and vanished, taking Yaxley with him.

* * *

By the time Harry returned home, that odd rush of pleasure was gone, burned out of him by the Cruciatus Curse and a seizure. When the Assistant had vanished, the door of the meeting room had burst open and Bellatrix and Lucius rushed inside. Bellatrix had thrown herself down by Voldemort with a cry of genuine fear. When she realised he was injured but alive, she ordered Lucius to heal him, then turned on Antonin and Harry.

She tortured them both until she got the story of what happened, by which time Lucius had healed Voldemort, who snarled at them all to get out. None of them hesitated to obey; the expression on his face seemed to scare even Bellatrix. Harry had staggered into the wall outside, the door slamming shut behind him.

"Go home, Evans," Lucius had ordered tersely, grabbing Antonin, who looked ready to throw up and pass out. "I wouldn't advise coming back unless he calls you again."

Harry nodded weakly, once, then had to shut his eyes against a wave of dizziness and let it pass before he could stagger out the hospital and teleport home.

He appeared in his bedroom, crumpled to the floor, and didn't try to get up. James and Sirius were still fast asleep, his last Wish on them unbroken, and he didn't disturb them now. He just lay on the carpet, listening to the voice hum and feeling his body ache, until Albus Dumbledore knocked on the front door an hour later.

Harry forced himself up, Wished James and Sirius awake, and ten minutes later they and Dumbledore were sitting around the dining room table with cups of tea and coffee. James had freshened up with a Cleansing Charm and put on some clothes, but Sirius had just pulled a dressing gown over his pyjamas.

"What's happened?" he asked, slumping into a chair and gulping down a mouthful of coffee.

"Pardon?" Dumbledore said. Sirius gave him a tired glare.

"It's too early for social visits, Dumbledore. Something's wrong. What is it?"

Dumbledore sighed. "I wish I could tell you otherwise, but yes, we have a problem, although I have some good news as well."

"Let's get the bad out of the way," Sirius sighed.

"As you wish. I'm afraid, James, that I have reason to believe you're being used by Lucius to spy on the Order."

"The hell he is!" Sirius burst out, nearly spilling his coffee. "Prongs isn't a spy!"

James frowned at Dumbledore. "I know I can't remember what happened while I was gone, and it's possible they made me tell them what I know, but that doesn't make me a spy. I didn't want to tell them anything and it's not like I'm planning to give them more."

"Aren't you?"

"How would I even do that? I don't know where he is. I can't go back to him. We don't have an owl and Sirius would notice if I was going out to send messages."

"Not if you went while he slept."

"I think _I_ would remember if I did that."

"You're saying you don't remember what you do at nights?" Dumbledore asked.

"I sleep at nights."

"Where do you get off saying things like this, Dumbledore?" Sirius interjected.

Dumbledore looked between all three of them. "Have any of you ever heard of the Animancupium?"

They all shook their heads.

"It's a very old spell that binds the soul of one person in slavery to that of the caster. It was originally created for use on Muggles, but it can be used on wizards as well."

"And you think he's under this spell?" Sirius said incredulously.

"The Animancupium creates loyalty between a caster and the target of the spell. Not only does it force them to obey orders put to them, it generates a fondness for the caster regardless of how poorly they treat the victim."

Dumbledore looked pointedly at James, who looked down at his hands.

 _Here's a question,_ said the voice to Harry. _Why didn't our new lord and master use this nifty little spell on you instead of going to all the trouble he did to get you to say yes?_

"This is bollocks," Sirius said. "James, tell him it's bollocks. You had Stockholm Syndrome, that's why you were like that about Malfoy. You're not a spy, you're—James, will you fucking say something?"

James sighed and didn't look up from his hands. "Sirius, I… I want to go back."

"Go back where?"

James closed his eyes, hunched his shoulders, and muttered, "To Lucius." He shivered a bit then, and said even more quietly, "To my Master."

Sirius stared at him. Dumbledore looked sad. Harry wasn't sure how to feel. He tried not to be openly delighted when Dumbledore first made his accusation, but hearing that James only did the things he did because of some sort of slavery spell… it changed things. If Lucius ordered James to help kidnap Harry, as Snape claimed, then James had had no choice in the matter, and Harry couldn't hate him for things he had no control over.

"James…" Sirius managed weakly.

"I'm sorry, Sirius," James said miserably. "I know it's wrong and that I shouldn't, but I want it anyway. I've been wanting it ever since I got back and if this is why…"

"No—no, James, this is—tell me you're joking. Tell me it's a fucking joke!"

James snapped his eyes open, looking at Sirius angrily now. "No. I can't tell you it's a joke because it's not. Look at me, Sirius—you noticed anything different about me since I was taken?"

Sirius' brow furrowed, eyes running over James in confusion.

"I'm not restless," James said. "I spent two weeks with my Master and I feel more relaxed than I have since I left him. When they checked me at the hospital, they found almost no signs of torture like they did on Harry. They didn't hurt me—"

"That bastard made you write with a blood quill!"

"They healed my scars! Not that one, but the rest, the ones I did to myself. And I don't care." James touched his left collarbone. "I don't care about this. It only says the truth, I belong to him. I know, logically, that I should hate it, that my Master is…" He trailed off, apparently unable to say anything bad about Lucius. "But he's still my Master."

"Then why not go?" Sirius spat, furious now. "If you're so eager to crawl back to Lucius' side then fucking go!"

"I can't," James snapped, glaring at Sirius.

"What do you mean by that?" Dumbledore asked before Sirius could reply with anything nasty. James dragged his gaze over.

"I just… I can't leave. I want to and I feel like if I tried then I could find Master, but I just… I can't. I have to stay here."

"Here in this house?"

James shook his head. "Just… here. I don't know."

"I would hazard a guess that you've been ordered to stay with the Order."

"To spy," Harry said.

"And he's sneaking out at night to report to Lucius?" Sirius sneered. "I haven't exactly been sleeping like a fucking baby, Dumbledore. I would have noticed if he left the house."

"Perhaps, or perhaps he hasn't yet left. I wouldn't imagine Lucius requested reports every night. Probably he set a date and gave, or will give, new orders for when they should next meet."

"So we're just accepting this then?" Sirius grouched. "That he's under this anima-whatsit? They checked him for curses when we found him. They checked his mind and looked for dark magic and all that shit. If he was under this curse, why didn't they find it?"

"Because they only tested for dark magic and curses that control the mind. Animancupium works on the soul and leaves only the barest traces of dark magic once it's complete. Unless one specifically looks for it, it would go completely undetected, and it is so old and rare that no one thought to."

"Then get him checked now. Call a healer, because I want proof."

"That won't be necessary," Dumbledore said, drawing his wand. "Despite the complexity of the Animancupium itself, the spell to determine if someone is under it is relatively simple." He pointed his wand at James, who stiffened. " _Vinservi homionspicuam interdometserv ostendere_."

A ghostly, pale blue chain faded into view, stretching out of James' chest and across the room until it hit the wall. Harry's eyes widened. Sirius' jaw dropped. James stared down at his chest.

"I'm sorry, James," Dumbledore said. He waved his wand and the chain dispersed away. James put a hand over his chest where it had been, closing his eyes and swallowing thickly.

"Break it," Sirius growled. "Take it off him."

Dumbledore's expression was grave and Harry knew what he'd say even before he opened his mouth. "It can't be removed. The Animancupium is unbreakable except by death. But there is something we can do."

Sirius straightened in his seat, looking suddenly hopeful. James snapped his gaze up and Harry thought he looked more suspicious than hopeful.

"The Bond cannot be broken, but it can be transferred to a new Master," Dumbledore told them. "You would still be Bound, but it wouldn't be to Lucius. However, I only discovered this last night and I haven't yet had time to investigate it. I don't know what side effects there may be to transferring the Bond."

"No," James said bluntly.

Sirius looked at him. "What?"

"I don't want it transferred."

"James, you've been _cursed_."

"I don't care," he said stubbornly. "You're not transferring it. You can stop me going to Order meetings, you can not tell me anything so I can't pass it on if you really think I'm doing that, you can lock me up if you like—but you're not transferring the Bond. I won't let you."

Sirius looked from him to Dumbledore, lost for words.

"We can make no decisions lightly," Dumbledore said, and James stood up, chair scraping against the floor.

" _We_ aren't making any decisions. It my soul and my Bond and my decision. You're not transferring it."

Dumbledore looked at him and James stared back, determined and fierce, and eventually Dumbledore nodded.

"Very well. But you'll attend no Order meetings."

James looked momentarily conflicted, then sat down and said shortly, "Fine."

Sirius slouched in his chair, folding his arms over his chest and scowling. Harry thought about mentioning that they could use James to pass bad information to Lucius, but he wasn't sure if it would work if James knew they were doing it. Presumably Dumbledore had already thought of this.

"How'd you figure this out anyway?" Sirius asked grouchily.

"I take it you haven't seen the _Daily Prophet_ this morning," Dumbledore said, and pulled one out of his pocket when they shook their heads. He passed it to Sirius, who read it with increasingly widening eyes, James reading over his shoulder.

"What happened?" Harry asked, as if he didn't already know.

"The Dark Lord wouldn't do this," James said.

Sirius' gaping expression turned angry again as he lowered the paper and turned to James. " 'The Dark Lord'?"

James frowned at him. "What?"

"Only Death Eaters call him that."

"It's what my Master calls him," James said stubbornly. "Of course I picked up a few things."

Sirius slammed the paper down and looked at Dumbledore. "What is this shit?"

"The Assistant."

Sirius sighed. "What the fuck is he up to now?"

"He's betrayed Voldemort. This was his rather dramatic resignation letter."

"No one resigns from the Death Eaters," Sirius said. "Voldemort's going to string him up for this."

"If he catches him," Harry said. "The Assistant's as powerful as I am. Maybe more. Why'd he do it?" he asked Dumbledore.

"He was quite upset by Severus' death."

"I remember that," Sirius said thoughtfully. "He was actually crying when Voldemort killed him. He in love with him or something?"

"Or something," Dumbledore said.

"He's under the Animancupium as well, isn't he?" James said, brow furrowed heavily. "The way he reacted to Preston Yaxley…"

"I thought you didn't remember anything," Harry said.

"I remember that night, and there's just something about the way the Assistant was acting when Yaxley spoke to him. The shaking… was that something to do with the Animancupium?"

Dumbledore nodded. "Slaves can, to some degree, disobey orders put to them, but I understand it causes pain. He's also the one who informed me that you were cursed. He's agreed to spy on Voldemort for the Order."

Sirius tapped the paper. "Going to have a tough time of it, isn't he?"

"He claims he has other methods of gaining information."

"You can't seriously trust him after everything he's done?" Sirius said incredulously, straightening in his chair and thumping a fist on the table. "After everything that bastard's done—he let Wormtail escape, he kidnapped Harry—he needs to be thrown in Azkaban, not trusted as a spy!"

"I sincerely doubt we'd get him into a prison cell," Dumbledore said. "Harry's quite right about his power; we've no idea the lengths of it. I will certainly take everything he gives me with a grain of salt, but with Severus dead I have no other spies within the Death Eaters, and none of the Ministry's spies are as close to Voldemort as he was. The Assistant may be a crucial source of information."

Sirius shook his head with disgust. "He's going to get us killed; don't say I didn't warn you."

Perhaps in an attempt to keep Sirius' mood getting even worse, James asked, "So what's this good news you mentioned?"

Dumbledore smiled then. "I'm surprised you haven't figured it out yourself. Perhaps Harry can."

He pushed the newspaper towards Harry, who picked it up and skimmed the article detailing what the Assistant did. He'd already figured out Dumbledore's news, but he wasn't sure he actually felt good about it.

He lowered the paper. "I can go back to Hogwarts?" It didn't come out cheerful, but he hoped that would be put down to uncertainty.

Dumbledore's smile widened and he nodded. "The Aurors arrested Dolores Umbridge last night and confirmed the truth of it. Once Henry Athelstan learned what happened, he immediately repealed his decision. You'll be able to resume your education in September."

Sirius finally perked up. "That's great!"

"But I already took my OWLs," Harry pointed out.

"And assuming you passed, which I'm sure you did splendidly, you can re-join as a sixth year," Dumbledore told him.

"This is good news, kid!" Sirius said, clapping him on the shoulder.

"Yeah," Harry agreed, hoping he just seemed too stunned to be cheerful. In truth, he was panicking a little. Certainly he loved Hogwarts and was elated to not be expelled, but going to school meant facing his friends every day and he wasn't sure he could do that.


	34. Chapter 34

**Chapter 34**

For the next few days, Sirius and James hardly spoke. Sirius acknowledged that James was cursed beyond his control and so didn't insist he leave, but the whole thing bothered him too much for him to be friendly about it. At the same time, he was immensely distrustful of letting James out of his sight, leaving him in a perpetual bad mood. The only time he did consent to leave James was to sleep, which he took to doing in Harry's room, curling up as Padfoot at the foot of the bed. Harry didn't really appreciate the incursion on his privacy, but at least they didn't sleep at the same time so Sirius couldn't realise how often he had nightmares.

"One of us has to always be awake," Sirius said to him quietly the day they found out about the Animancupium. "If he leaves, we can follow him and catch Malfoy and sort this whole stupid mess out."

"I'll watch him," Harry said, "but I can't follow. Sirius, if Lucius sees me, he'll tell Voldemort I was getting involved and he'll kill everyone."

Sirius' mouth tightened briefly, but then something flashed through his eyes and he nodded, patting Harry on the shoulder. "Of course. I'll follow him, I just need you to wake me up if he goes anywhere."

The day after Dumbledore's visit, they went to Diagon Alley again so Harry could get a new wand. Despite having gone just two days earlier, no one complained; none of them liked being cooped up in the house lately.

"Ah, Mr Evans," Ollivander greeted when he came through from the tall stacks. "I expected I'd hear from you soon; I saw the news that your expulsion was repealed. And Mr Black, Mr Potter, good to see you again.

"Let me see what I can do for you… quite the tricky customer, as I recall," he mused as he started pulling boxes from his shelves. "Curious wand that chose you in the end, I must say."

"It was?" Harry asked as Ollivander brought over a pile of boxes. "Why?"

Ollivander paused in the middle of handing Harry a ten inch ash wand with unicorn hair. "I remember every wand I've ever sold, Mr Evans. It just so happens that the phoenix feather in your original wand came from a bird who gave one other feather for my use. It's curious that that wand chose you," he said, eyes flicking to the unconcealed scar on Harry's forehead, "when its brother gave you that scar."

Harry's eyes widened. "You knew about that? Why didn't you tell me when you sold me it?"

Ollivander looked peeved. "You had some trouble finding a suitable wand, Mr Evans, and I had no idea who you were at the time—that is to say, that you were the Boy Who Lived. I had no desire to scare a young boy off a suitable wand by telling him it was brother to one owned by He Who Must Not Be Named."

Put like that, he had a point.

Once again Harry seemed to go through half the shop, but instead of eventually finding one that suited him, Ollivander considered Harry thoughtfully.

"If I may, Mr Evans, I realise you're quite eager to have a wand again, but are you in dire need of one immediately or would you be able to wait a short while? A month, perhaps."

"Um… I guess I can wait, as long as I have it in time for school. Why?"

"I think it might be prudent to custom make a wand. I don't often do it but sometimes a wizard requires it. I recall that, when I inspected your wand for the Triwizard tournament, it was unusually worn and it seems to me that a more tailored wand might be suited to you. Perhaps with… might I ask, and without prejudice, are the rumours of you being a Parselmouth true?"

"Yes," Harry said warily.

"As I said, I enquire without prejudice, but snake scales are occasionally used as wand cores. I don't use them, but I think for you I might make the exception. Possibly even a basilisk scale… tricky to obtain, but… yes, I think… combined with acacia… it would be expensive, however."

"I can afford it," Harry said, quite taken with the idea of a custom made wand.

" _I_ can afford it," Sirius said from his chair. "This is on me, kid."

Harry didn't argue with that. "I know where to get basilisk scales, too," Harry said, and when Ollivander raised an eyebrow at him he hurriedly added, "That is, Professor Snape had some. Professor McGonagall has been sorting out his things at Hogwarts, she'd probably send you some from his stores, if they haven't been cleared out. If you mentioned it's for me, she'd probably definitely give you some."

"Is that so? Well I will certainly contact her. I will send you an owl when I'm done; you can expect it in a month or so, certainly before the new school year begins."

* * *

It was Sunday when something finally happened with James. Shortly before midnight, Harry heard movement from elsewhere in house while he sat up late reading, and focused his magical eye to see James leaving his bedroom and crossing quietly to Harry's. Harry lay down and feigned sleep as James slowly cracked open the door and peered in, watching him and Padfoot for a short while until he was convinced they were asleep. When he left, Harry watched him again, saw James fetch his Invisibility Cloak, swing it on, and head for the stairs.

"Sirius," Harry said quietly, shaking the dog. Padfoot woke quickly, yawning widely. "James is leaving. He's taking his invisibility cloak."

Sirius transformed. "I can follow his scent. Has he gone yet?"

"No."

They sat still until James had left the house, then Sirius fetched shoes and his wand, asked if Harry was sure he'd be alright alone, and hurried out after James. Harry watched him go, chewed his lip in thought, then turned invisible and flew out his window. He just wanted to see what would happen. As long as he didn't get involved, it would be alright.

It was easy enough to follow Sirius and James. James didn't seem concerned that he was being followed and Harry wondered why he'd even bothered with the cloak at all. Padfoot kept a safe distance behind, nose close to the ground as he followed James' trail out the back garden and into the woods. James walked for a mile, never stopping to check his surrounding or look for markers. For all intents and purposes, he seemed to be walking entirely at random, but eventually he sped up slightly and then came to a tree where Lucius Malfoy stood impatiently. James slowed, pulled off his cloak, and dropped to his knees. Harry perched on a tree branch. A short distance away, he saw Sirius slowing, dropping low and creeping through the undergrowth.

"Master," James greeted reverently. He looked briefly conflicted, but then Lucius smiled warmly at him, reaching out to run a hand through his hair, and James relaxed instantly, looking as if there was nowhere else he'd rather be.

"Precious. I'm glad you made it. What news do you have for me?"

James looked up, worry etched on his face. "They know about the Animancupium. Why did you make me forget it?"

Lucius stiffened. "How do you know about it?"

"Dumbledore came on Thursday morning. The Assistant told him about it, and that I'm being used to spy on them. The Assistant's planning to spy on the Dark Lord now."

Lucius swore, a curse more vulgar than Harry would have expected from the aristocratic man.

"What did they say of you?" he asked urgently.

"I'm not permitted to attend Order meetings. They wanted to transfer the Bond, but I refused. I'll never be taken from you."

Lucius' expression softened momentarily at that, but only briefly. He looked about, scanning the darkness around them. "Were you followed here?"

"I… I don't think so," James said, glancing around as well. "Sirius and Harry were asleep. Do you think Dumbledore had the house watched?"

"Possibly." He kept looking around, face thoughtful. Harry saw Padfoot shuffle forwards, but it made a rustle of noise and Lucius' gaze snapped towards him and Padfoot stopped. Harry held his breath, watching, but Lucius must have dismissed it as nothing because he looked back to James.

"What of Evans? What's he been doing?"

"Reading, spending time in his room. He went out Wednesday night."

Lucius frowned. "Where?"

"I don't know."

"For how long?"

"A few hours."

Lucius' frown deepened. "What of the next morning?"

James shook his head, but then said regretfully, "I slept late, Master, until Dumbledore came. Harry might have slipped out without me noticing."

Lucius hummed an agreement. Harry made a Wish for him to forget what he'd just heard. He didn't need Voldemort getting word about his late night trips.

Lucius looked down at James. "I have to leave."

James' expression fell.

"Master, take me with you," he pleaded. "I'm no good here now they know about me. Let me come with you, please."

"No. You might not be able to attend Order meetings, but you can still hear things. You will be extra vigilant. They may let information slip, and they may intentionally let you overhear things. Report everything to me; the Dark Lord will decide what might be a false lead."

Unhappily, James nodded.

"When you get home, you will go to bed, sleep, and forget coming out to see me, but return here when I call you again."

James closed his eyes. Lucius ran a hand through his hair again and let it settle on the back of his head, his other hand cupping James' cheek. James sighed softly, leaning into him.

Padfoot snarled. Lucius whirled, James sprang to his feet, and Sirius burst out of the bushes, brandishing his wand. Harry refrained from doing anything to help, deciding he'd only interfere if it looked like Lucius—or James, who went to his defence—would really hurt or kill Sirius.

Like when he'd seen Snape and Bellatrix fight, Harry was surprised at how fast and furious a proper duel was between experienced adults. Despite being outnumbered, Sirius did a good job of defending himself, made use of his environment to help, and kept his offensive tight enough that Lucius never had a chance to try Apparating away.

Eventually one of Sirius' spells caught Lucius in the shoulder and he slammed backwards into a tree with a grunt, dropping his wand and grabbing at his shoulder, arm hanging lank and useless. James made a noise of protest and hit Sirius with a spell that made blood splash against the shrubbery, but next moment a bolt of red slammed into him hard enough to knock him off his feet.

Lucius crouched, good hand grasping wildly for his dropped wand, but Sirius called out, " _Accio!_ " and the wand flew away from Lucius' reaching hand and into the darkness. He stepped into view, his wand fixed on Lucius, limping slightly, robes slashed at the leg.

"I will kill you," Sirius growled.

Lucius sneered up at him, but made no move to get up. "Will you really?"

"Yes. I kill you, and James is free."

"You kill me and James is dead."

"Shut up!"

Lucius smiled mockingly. "Someone hasn't done their homework. Why am I not surprised?"

" _Shut up!_ " Sirius repeated, and a spark burst out of his wand and slammed into Lucius' cheek to leave a bright red scorch. Lucius hissed with pain, glaring up at him.

"Do it then, Black. Kill me and kill your friend in the process."

"You're lying."

"I assure you, I'm not. James' very soul is tied to mine. If I die, he will die, too. You might free him from my control, but you will lose him in the process."

Sirius said nothing, breathing hard. Lucius smiled grimly.

"Fine," Sirius said eventually. "Fine."

He flicked his wand and ropes sprang out to twist around Lucius, making him cry out even as they wrapped around him from throat to ankle and sent him toppling over.

"I'll just take you in and you can go straight back to Azkaban."

Lucius' smile faltered, a haunted grimace crossing his face, then he said, "I'll call him to me."

"What?"

"James," Lucius said. "I will call him to me, even in Azkaban. He will come after me."

"Bollocks he will."

"How do you think he found me tonight, Black?"

"You arranged—" Sirius began, but Lucius shook his head.

"He is _mine_ , Black. I only have to desire his presence and he would cross the world to find me. I promise you, if you put me in Azkaban, I will call him to me until he does whatever it takes to reach my side. If he manages not to get killed trying to reach me, he'll certainly get arrested, and when the Dark Lord comes to break me out I will take him with me and you will never see him again."

Sirius looked like he might throw another Stinging Hex, or worse, but he just said, "We'll lock you somewhere other than Azkaban. He can see you, occasionally, but under special watch."

Lucius was sneering again. "Do you really think that will be enough for him? I can make him miserable if I please. I can still call him so strongly he will never leave the bars of whatever cage you put me in. I will order him to do whatever it takes to free me, and he will succeed or come so close you are forced to cage him too." He paused long enough to let Sirius absorb that before going on, "If you want your friend to have any semblance of freedom, you'll let me go. I won't call him to me—he's no good to me if you're following him about—and you can pretend things are how they used to be."

Sirius looked between Lucius and James, angry and conflicted. Harry didn't know what his decision would be, but he knew when he'd come to it because his expression set.

"No," he said. "You come with us. We'll figure something out."

And then he Stunned him.

* * *

Although the Order of the Phoenix was headquartered at 12 Grimmauld Place, they had a couple of other properties to use. They weren't as heavily enchanted, but a bungalow on the outskirts of a small Norfolk village had a cage set up in one of the bedrooms.

James went in with Lucius. It made Sirius want to hit something, but they had no choice. James wasn't even pretending to be anything other than loyal to Lucius and if they didn't cage him too then he would help Lucius escape.

"What do we do, Dumbledore?" Sirius asked, sitting in the kitchen, elbows on a table and head in his hands. Hestia Jones and Dedalus Diggle were in the house, too, somewhere. Sirius didn't care. All he cared about right then was James. "Was Malfoy telling the truth? If he dies, James dies?"

"Unfortunately."

"God."

"Sirius, you should return to Harry."

Sirius rubbed both hands over his face then through his hair. He inhaled shakily and blew it out in a long breath, then sat up. "What are you going to do with them? We've never taken prisoners before, Dumbledore. That's what the other side does, not us. But if we send Malfoy to Azkaban…"

"This is war," Dumbledore said quietly. "We do what we have to. They stay here for now. We might be able to get some information from Lucius in the meantime."

Sirius nodded absently. He was more interested in what they would do for James, but he knew Dumbledore didn't have an answer for that.

He went home. Harry was still in his bedroom, not yet asleep. Sirius had stopped by after capturing Lucius just to tell Harry what he'd done and make sure the kid didn't worry while Sirius dealt with the Death Eater.

"What'll happen to them?" Harry asked now.

"I don't know," Sirius told him. "The Order will figure it out."

Harry bit his lip, but didn't ask anymore. Sirius knew he was curious and wanted to help, but was holding back from fear of what might get back to Voldemort. Six lives—or so Dumbledore said, despite Sirius' memories telling him James had been cursed, too—depended on Voldemort believing Harry wasn't getting involved with the war. It was a heavy weight to bear.

Sirius transformed and climbed onto Harry's bed, curling up to hopefully get a little sleep. He was exhausted, but he always was these days. The depression over losing Remus was such a heavy weight on him that sometimes he could barely even get up, yet as tired as he was, sleep eluded him, especially deep reinvigorating sleep. It was easier as a dog.

He managed to grab a few hours. Harry was fast asleep by the time he woke and Sirius stayed with him, shifting to lay alongside Harry's curled back. He knew Harry didn't like having him around much and it hurt. He couldn't understand why, but he didn't like to be alone and Harry never actually sent him away so Sirius stayed even when he wasn't wanted. Maybe if they actually talked, it would make things better, but Sirius didn't want to talk about what had happened over a week ago, and he got the impression Harry didn't either.

They ate when Harry finally woke, shortly before midday, and Sirius forced himself to stay in the living room when Harry retreated to his bedroom again. He sat before the fireplace, staring into the empty grate, trying not to think about anything that would get him upset or angry. It didn't leave a lot of options.

He didn't look around when he heard the door from the front hall, not until Harry said, "I'm going to see Draco."

"It'd be nice if you actually asked," Sirius told him.

"Can I?"

"If I say no, are you going to go back upstairs?"

"I want to go out."

"You don't think I might want some company? I just had to put my best friend in cage because of the man who fathered the boy you want to see."

"Sirius, I'm sorry," Harry said. "I need to get out."

He could be a stubborn little sod sometimes. Sirius loved him, he really did, but he didn't have the patience for dealing with this right now. He turned back to the fireplace, knowing as he spoke that his voice came out bitter.

"Then go."

Harry lingered a moment longer, perhaps intending to change his mind, but he just sighed and left without another word. Sirius heard the front door open and close, waited a few seconds until he was sure Harry had probably gone, and then leapt to his feet and yanked his wand from his pocket.

Five minutes later, the living room was a mess of broken objects, scorch marks on the wall, carpet torn up. Sirius sat amidst it all, sobbing.

He would have ignored the owl that turned up, but it was persistent and erratic, tapping out a rhythmless melody against the window that drilled through his ears. Wiping his face dry, he got up and went to open the window. The barn owl perched on the sill and held its leg out impatiently, then flew off as soon as Sirius had taken a small, leather bound book and a letter.

He opened the letter, didn't recognise the handwriting, and scowled when he saw the signature. He thought of throwing it away, but the title on the book made him reluctantly read the accompanying missive. After, he looked out the window, gaze unseeing and thoughtful for sometime before determination settled in place, then he Disapparated straight from the house.

 _Sirius—_

 _If you want to keep James safe, keep reading. Don't dismiss this letter because of who it comes from. I'm the only one with information you need._

 _I wouldn't normally do this because I know how unpleasant it is to be stolen from one's Master, but I doubt you're any more willing to send J back to Lucius than Albus is, so I'm advising the next best thing: take the Bond for yourself._

 _I'm guessing A didn't tell you that you don't need J or L's permission/involvement to do it. Given that A is smart enough to realise no good can come of letting J stay Bound to L, maybe you should ask yourself why he hasn't had you take the Bond yet._

 _Don't take that the wrong way – I'm not trying to turn you against A. But he's a practical bloke and he might see an advantage in making himself J's Master. I don't know if you'd agree or not, but personally I wouldn't want to be the Slave of someone in charge of fighting a war._

 _If you're going to take the Bond yourself, there's a few things you should know_

 _– Make sure you do the transfer bond spell (see book, p78) not create bond which won't work_

 _– J doesn't have to be conscious to transfer the Bond. If he is he will fight you HARD_

 _– J will have to be around you A LOT. The further apart you are, the more unpleasant it is for him (physical ache; v. long dist. + longer apart becomes painful). It's best if you're in the same room for at least 1hr every day for 3mth. Physical contact helps (doesn't have to be sexual)_

 _– EVERYTHING YOU SAY IS AN ORDER. "Pass the salt" – "sit down" – "go fuck yourself" (e.g. in argument). Learn to speak in questions if you don't want to give orders_

 _– WATCH YOURSELF. Power of Bond goes to Master's head. Be careful of thinking you're better than him, he owes you, he's wrong if he doesn't behave exactly as you want, etc_

 _– J will feel some things you feel – will know if upset, v. happy, etc. He will feel if you get hurt badly. Will also feel some pleasure if you have sex. If you die, he dies with magical outburst (damage to property, can harm bystanders, may kill bystanders if v. close)_

 _– If you + J have sex, no one else will ever be as good for him (unless new person take Bond). Will make connection stronger. Best advice: do not have sex with him._

 _Keep in mind that taking J's Bond won't necessarily make him hate L immediately. He spent 14yrs in L's basement, there's probably some other psych issues to deal with._

 _It won't make J how he was before either. He is a Slave and always will be. He will be submissive to you even without orders. May learn to be rebellious, esp. with you as Master, but mostly will go along with whatever you want._

 _His whole world will revolve around you; you will be more important to him than his own life. Don't forget that._

 _– Assistant_

* * *

Harry was the only one to enter the meeting room when he answered Voldemort's summons. He hadn't been surprised to feel the mark burn the afternoon after Lucius' capture, but he arrived with his heart in his throat. He wasn't sure what Voldemort's reaction to the event was going to be and he didn't know if being alone was a good or bad thing.

"Do you have any news for me, Harry?" Voldemort asked.

Harry thought of feigning ignorance, but he wasn't sure it'd go down well and he didn't know what Voldemort might know already. He must at least have suspicions to be calling Harry right now.

"The Order captured Lucius."

Voldemort looked so furious Harry thought he would Crucio him. "How?"

Harry explained it all, leaving out the fact that he'd gone to watch what happened last night.

"You will free him."

Harry's eyes widened. "What?"

"Get Lucius out."

 _Oh, that'll be fun._

"But…"

Voldemort raised his wand. "Are you questioning me?"

"No. I just… they might figure out it was me."

"Then make sure they don't," Voldemort hissed. "You are mine, Harry, and you will do as I order. Get Lucius free before they transfer him to Azkaban."

"Yes, my lord," he said, and left at Voldemort's dismissal.

He didn't go home. Sirius wouldn't expect him back for a while and in any case Harry didn't want to go back yet. Home had became a place of misery lately; he didn't want to deal with that.

He Wished for some money from his trunk, went food shopping, and then took it to Spinner's End. Snape was reading when Harry arrived, but he put the book aside to help unpack.

"I wasn't really sure what you liked so I just got the basics," Harry told him then took a money pouch from his pocket and set it down on the kitchen counter. "Also, I cleared out your Gringotts vault and exchanged it for Muggle money so you can do your own shopping now. You can transfigure your appearance or use glamour charms, can't you? Then you can get food yourself."

"Yes, thank you. I appreciate you not leaving me to starve to death."

"I wouldn't do that."

"That's good to hear. I—this isn't a basic," Snape interrupted himself, pulling a bottle of vodka from one bag. Harry shrugged.

"I did break a bottle, and I thought you might need some. Just maybe don't get drunk again."

"I'll refrain. Thank you. What did the Dark Lord call you for?"

"How did you know he called?"

"The tracking pendant. You were closer."

"That doesn't mean he called me."

"If you'd been in Hogsmeade or London it would have been colder, not warmer. It seems unlikely you'd have been anywhere else so I took an educated guess."

"Oh," Harry said, and then told him about James and Lucius.

"I've heard of the Animancupium," Snape said after, the two of them now in the living room. "I'm surprised Lucius has; he was never one for the books. He's a social man; he prefers learning from others, but I suppose he must have heard about Animancupium and couldn't resist finding out more. How will you free him?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't know. I have to find him first. Sirius didn't tell me where he took them."

Snape tapped a thoughtful finger against his mouth. "Diss, probably, in Norfolk. It's the only Order property with facilities to use as a temporary prison. There's usually only a few people there; you should be able to get in and out easily enough. Potter is a bigger problem. Are you going to leave him behind?"

"I don't know. The Dark Lord only told me to free Lucius."

"Then see what he wants to do with Potter. He's the one that can make Potter's life difficult either way and by the sounds of it Potter would prefer to go with him. Are you leaving now?"

"Not to—where was it?"

"Diss."

"Yeah. I'll do that tonight, I guess. But I told Sirius I was going to see Draco so I'm going there now."

"Do you trust him?" Snape asked.

Harry furrowed his brow. "Yes. Why?"

"He could be used to keep watch on you as well," Snape warned. "Dislike it all you want, but Draco is Lucius' son and he loves his father. If Lucius asked him—"

"I trust Draco," Harry interrupted, and his tone was enough to make Snape swallow any further arguments.

"Very well," he conceded, "but there are two matters I wanted to discuss with you. Firstly, I need some way to spend my time. I'm far from the most social creature in the world, but even I will go mad if I am trapped in this house for as long as it takes the Dark Lord to die."

Harry sighed. "I know, but I haven't been able to think of anything."

"I have, but I will need a little assistance to start."

"What is it?"

"Working for the Dark Lord brought me into contact with a few individuals who dealt in… questionable produce. I could never risk my teaching career getting involved but I know the trade. I can disguise myself, contact a few people, and work from there, but I'll need cauldrons and ingredients to start."

"You're going to become a drug dealer?"

"Supplier," Snape corrected. "Dealing would involve interacting with too many people."

"Do you need my help disguising you when you go to see whoever it is you need to see? Or will transfiguration be enough of a disguise for that? There's limits, aren't there? I haven't studied it yet."

"It has a few limits, but it's a difficult magic and not one I excel at," Snape admitted with such clear reluctance that Harry nearly smiled. "Polyjuice would be better, if you can obtain me the ingredients I need for that and to mix up an initial batch of potions to sell."

"Alright. If you write a list of what you need I'll come get it in a few days and buy everything."

"Not everything I need can be bought at the apothecary in Diagon Alley."

"Then where? Knockturn Alley? That's fine," he said when Snape nodded. "I can do that. What else did you want to talk about?"

"Occlumency," Snape said, and at Harry's startled look explained, "When I taught you it before, we only practised defensive techniques. If you're to keep me a secret from the Dark Lord, you need to know the subtler evasive techniques. You need to learn to organise and manage your memories and emotions." He paused, then added, "It would also help you to deal with your torture."

A tiny little bubble of hope suddenly appeared in Harry's chest. "It could stop the panic attacks?"

He hadn't had once since Thursday, but ever since it happened he was afraid it would come again. He would do anything to prevent that.

"I cannot guarantee that," Snape warned, "but it will help. Learning to manage your memories and emotions will help you control when they start to overwhelm you. But I warn you—it will not be easy to begin. You will have to face what was done to you, Harry."

Harry laughed bitterly. "I am facing it. Every night when I dream about Bellatrix torturing me. Every day when I shower I remember what Nott did to me. I still can't wash him away."

"And when you do, you shove those memories as far back in your mind as you can, don't you?" Snape guessed, and nodded when Harry didn't answer. "If we do this, you will have to actually face them. You will never learn to deal with the emotions if you can't handle thinking about what happened."

"Can you?" Harry asked, staring down at his lap but letting his magic eye twist up to watch Snape's face. "They tortured you as well and Nott…" Snape turned his head away, closing his eyes, jaw tightening. "He did _that_ to you, too."

Snape took a moment to answer, breathing steadily through his nose, hands tight on the arms of his chair, then he opened his eyes again but didn't look around at Harry. "Nott raped me. The fact that I can at least say it should tell you enough."

His voice was terse. Harry doubted he was dealing with it as well as he wanted Harry to believe.

"I can say it," Harry muttered. "I told Draco."

Snape looked at him then, surprise flickering in his eyes. "How did he react?"

"He was fine."

"Fine?"

Harry shrugged. "He didn't run away. He stayed with me. He hugged me." He paused, dropped his voice and lowered his gaze entirely, mumbled, "He said he loved me."

"Before or after—"

"Before. I—that's why I told him. I trust him and I want him to trust me, so I couldn't lie to him. He said he didn't care that I… that Nott… r-raped me."

Snape seemed to consider that for a moment before asking, with some awkwardness, "Have the two of you ever… been intimate?"

 _Oh dear god. Are we really having the conversation?_

"No," Harry said, squirming slightly. "I don't… I'm not interested in… that. Not even before…" He trailed off, shrugged, then tried not to sound concerned as he asked, "Do you think there's something wrong with me?"

"No," Snape answered without hesitation, but not so fast as to be suspicious. Harry glanced up. Snape avoided his gaze, his cheeks tinged with colour as he said stiffly, "I was only ever interested in your mother. But we've got somewhat off topic," Snape said gruffly. "We were supposed to be discussing your Occlumency."

Glad for the change, Harry asked, "When do you want to teach me?"

"The sooner the better."

 _Now then,_ the voice said, and Harry knew that he should, but he wanted to go see Draco.

"When I bring the potions stuff," he said. "In a few days."

Snape frowned.

"I'm not ready," Harry said, hearing a hint of pleading in his own voice. "I just… I need a few more days."

Snape sighed, but nodded. "Very well. But watch your thoughts around the Dark Lord."

"I will," Harry promised, and left.

He went to Malfoy Manor but figured he should go through the front door this time instead of creeping up to Draco's bedroom. He approached the wrought iron front gates, feeling oddly intimidated by the looming manor before him and the high hedges on either side. He wasn't sure whether there was some kind of magical intercom system at the gates and couldn't see anything, so he tried pushing the gates open, but they were locked. Maybe Draco and Narcissa weren't home.

The gates shifted suddenly and he jumped back, staring as the iron twisted itself into a frightening face and a clanging voice called, "State your purpose."

"Uh…" he said, startled, then got a hold of himself. "I'd like to see Draco, please. It's Harry Evans."

There was a moment's pause, and then the metal twisted back to normal and the gates swung open. Harry made his way up the long driveway to the house, jumping slightly when a peacock burst out of the bushes. He reached the front door just as it swung open and Draco stepped out, grinning at him and pulling him into a hug. Harry hugged him back, pressing his face to Draco's shoulder and inhaling the smell of him. He'd missed him.

 _You saw him five days ago,_ the voice grumbled. Harry ignored it; seeing him at Snape's funeral hardly counted.

"You alright?" Draco asked, squeezing gently. Harry nodded. "You going to come in? You should at least say hello to my mother."

They broke apart and Harry followed him through to the drawing room where Narcissa relaxed with a book. They exchanged greetings, then Harry and Draco headed upstairs to Draco's room.

"At least you came through the front door this time," Draco said, gesturing for Harry to take a seat.

Harry pulled out the desk chair. "I thought I should."

Draco sat on the bed. "How are you doing?"

Harry shrugged. "Okay."

"Really?"

"No."

"Is there anything I can do?" Draco asked, not quite managing to hide the fact he clearly didn't know what he could do.

Harry turned his head aside, looking out the window. It was a nice day out, the breeze keeping the summer heat from getting oppressive. Draco's window was shut, facing south and brightly lit, but his room was still pleasantly cool.

"Harry?"

"Fly with me," Harry said, barely even thinking about it. He looked back over. "Like we did on Valentine's."

Draco grinned, grabbed his broomstick from the corner, and made for the door.

"Where are you going?"

Draco looked back around. Harry stood up and opened the window. Draco looked between him and it.

"We're not flying out the window."

"It's quicker through the window," Harry told him, climbing up onto the windowsill.

"It's _safer_ through the door."

"Doors are for people with no imagination."

"Since when?"

"Since now," Harry said. "Don't tell me you've never flown out your window before."

"Not since I was a kid," Draco said, but he came over. "The first time I did it, Father scolded me so of course I kept doing it."

"So come on."

"I'm not so little anymore," Draco said, eyeing the frame, though it was a perfectly decent sized window. "I'm bigger than you, and with us both on the broom…"

Harry rolled his eyes and stepped out. Draco lunged, grabbing for him and screaming his name, and then stared as Harry floated just outside the window. His hand stayed tight around Harry's arm, fingers digging into the Dark Mark.

"You're—you're—"

"Flying. I told you I can do almost anything."

Draco just stared until Harry tried to pry his fingers loose.

"You're bruising me."

Draco let go. "You frightened the life out of me, don't ever do that again."

"Sorry," Harry said, only half sincere. It was hard to feel genuinely apologetic when the voice was still cackling about the look on Draco's face when Harry stepped out. "Come on out here."

Draco climbed onto the window sill, positioned himself with the broom, then flew out. They moved away from the manor and Harry drifted closer to him.

"You going to let me on?"

"You don't really need it," Draco noted, but shifted and let go of the broom with his hands, making room for Harry to settle onto it in front of him.

"But I want to," Harry said, getting into position. Draco's arms came around him, warm and safe, his chin perching on Harry's shoulder. One hand gripped the broom, steadying them, but the other circled Harry's waist.

"I'm glad," he said, and kissed Harry's cheek. Harry snuggled in closer to him, and they set off over the manor grounds.

* * *

Half an hour later they were on the ground, sitting at the centre of a patch of dead grass, Harry on his hands and knees, the last vestiges of his panic attack fading. Draco knelt beside him, one burnt hand cradled against his chest, but concern the only expression on his face.

Harry sat back on his heels, sighing shakily, and only then noticed Draco's hand.

"Oh God, Draco…"

"It's okay. It's not that bad."

Harry reached for him, taking the burnt hand gently between his and Wishing it healed. The burns faded, but Draco still winced when Harry ran his fingers over it.

"I'm sorry, I can't fix pain," Harry said miserably.

"I'm fine," Draco insisted. "What about you? Are you okay? What was that? I thought you might faint."

Harry shook his head. He might prefer fainting. It had to beat the pain and fear of the panic attacks. He didn't even know what brought this one on. One minute they were flying and discussing the limits of Harry's magic, and the next his heart was hammering and he couldn't breathe. Draco had flown them down and Harry had collapsed to the ground. He hadn't noticed the harm he did Draco when he tried to touch him, had only flinched away and tried unsuccessfully to get himself under control. Draco hadn't touched him again, just demanded to know what was wrong. Harry couldn't answer and Draco's own panic hadn't helped, so he'd just knelt there, waiting for it to pass and wishing he had Snape to make it go away.

 _Hmph,_ the voice huffed. _Personally I don't like the thought of him digging through our head._

"Do you want me to fetch my mother? She still knows her healing…"

Harry shook his head again and forced himself to speak. "It was a panic attack. I'm okay now."

" _That_ was a panic attack?"

Harry shot him a questioning glance and Draco looked faintly embarrassed.

"I thought…"

"What?"

Draco coughed, looked away. "I thought panic attacks were girls getting hysterical. Shrieking and crying and all that stuff."

Harry huffed a laugh and Draco's cheeks darkened slightly, but he seemed glad that Harry wasn't offended.

"Are you sure you're alright?"

Harry shrugged. "As good as I can be."

He shifted and leant into Draco. Draco wrapped both arms around him, one hand going to his hair. Harry hoped he didn't feel how unusually tense he was. He was terrified that he'd had the panic attack because of how close he'd been with Draco on the broom. He hated the thought that this would leave him unable to cuddle and hug Draco like he used to. He needed the comfort of Draco's touch more than ever right now.

Not wanting to let his thoughts linger on it and risk setting off another attack, he sought for something else to discuss. His gaze fell on the dead grass around them.

"I'm sorry about your garden. I didn't mean to kill your grass."

 _Neat little trick, though._

Draco glanced about them. "I'm not sure how to explain this to my mother."

Harry thought a moment, then made a couple of Wishes. He couldn't bring to life something dead, but he could vanish the grass, leaving only dirt in its place, and then Wish fresh green shoots to spring up in its place.

"Whoa…"

"Does it scare you? My power?"

"No. I'm impressed. Bit jealous."

"A bit?"

"Maybe a lot," Draco admitted. "Do you even need to go to Hogwarts?"

"Not really, but I like it. It makes me feel normal. It lets me make…"

He felt Draco look down at him, but kept his cheek pressed to Draco's chest, not looking up.

"Make what?"

"Friends," Harry muttered. "I don't know if I still have any except you though."

"Have you spoken to them since Lupin's funeral?"

"No. I think Cid probably hates me. Maybe Tyler too. I wrote to him, but I haven't heard back."

"You haven't written to anyone else?"

"I don't know if they want to hear from me. I only wrote to Tyler because I found out about his real dad."

"His… hang on, that Assistant fellow mentioned that when we were… you asked him about it and told Lyle?"

"I thought he deserved to know."

Draco shifted. "So does that mean you've been…?" He trailed off, but one hand touched Harry's left arm.

"A couple of times."

"What did he ask you to do?"

Harry hesitated, unsure if he should answer, but Draco was the son of a Death Eater. It was probably okay to talk about these things with him.

"Did you see the news on Thursday morning?"

Draco nodded. "Mother says it's some kind of ploy by the Ministry to discredit the Dark Lord."

"No, it was the Assistant. He turned traitor."

"What did he call you for then?"

"I have to find him. The Assistant, I mean."

"You haven't already? Can't you find people with your magic?"

"Not him," Harry lied, although he hadn't tried. Voldemort didn't know about his tracking arrows or the full extent of Harry's power, so unless it looked like his friends were at risk, Harry was going to pretend he just wasn't capable of finding the Assistant. The Order needed a spy and the Assistant was the only one they had, so far as Harry was aware.

Draco didn't doubt him. He ran his fingers through Harry's hair. "You said he called you twice."

Harry pulled away, sitting up and looking at Draco, who couldn't fail to pick up on his tension.

"What is it?"

"It's your father."

Draco's breath hitched. "Is he okay?"

Harry looked down, pulling at the newly grown grass. "The Order captured him. They're holding him prisoner."

Draco swallowed so thickly Harry could hear it. "He's going back to Azkaban."

Harry shook his head and explained everything that happened, including the Animancupium on James. After how James treated Draco, Harry thought he deserved to know.

"When are you breaking him out?" Draco asked after.

"Tonight."

"Can you do it?"

"Yes. I have to."

 _We could probably break him out of Azkaban, now the Dementors are gone,_ the voice said, which was probably true.

Draco nodded. He didn't ask anything more, just stood, picked up his broom, and held out his hand. "Let's go back inside."

* * *

Lucius would admit to no one that he hoped Black, Dumbledore, nor anyone else in the Order would discover they could steal James from him, or that if they did realise then they would feel too pure-hearted to be Master of a slave bond.

It was wishful thinking, though, and he knew it. He wasn't even surprised when it was Black that came to the cage where he and James were locked up. Lucius lay using James' lap as a pillow and his own cloak as a blanket beneath him. He shuddered at the thought of what he might be laying in, but he had little choice. He'd have used James' cloak as a barrier, but he'd only come with his Invisibility Cloak, which of course Black had taken.

He felt no embarrassment or shame at being seen laying with his head in another man's lap; he was perfectly secure in his straight masculinity. If anything, he was rather amused at the expression it brought to Black's face, so he stayed where he was as Black came up to the bars of the cage.

"Have you fucked him?"

Trust Black to be so crude. Still, he looked as if he might have an aneurysm, so Lucius asked lazily, "Today?"

"Ever," Black spat, very nearly shaking with fury. "Did you rape him while he was in that dungeon of yours?"

Lucius sat up then, slowly, mocking smile vanishing. "I am no rapist."

"You expect me to believe that?"

Without taking his gaze off Black, Lucius said, "Precious, tell Black if I ever had sex with you. Be completely truthful."

James answered without hesitation, "He didn't, Sirius, I told you that before."

"He would lie for you," Black said to Lucius.

"I ordered him to speak truthfully. I am no rapist, Black. Even if I were, I'm perfectly straight, and I was quite happily married for nearly twenty years."

Black said nothing, looking between them, still with that twisted expression of fury and disgust on his face, and then he drew his wand. Lucius got to his feet. He wouldn't be cursed sitting down, even if he couldn't defend himself. Black aimed his wand at James, who tensed, and cast a simple Stunning Spell, then turned on Lucius and threw a curse that sent such severe pain through his abdomen that he dropped to his knees, clutching his stomach and bending over.

He heard Black open the cage door, but couldn't uncurl to make any attempt at reaching him. It felt like his intestines were tying themselves in knots. He could barely lift his head to watch Black levitate James off the floor and take him out, slamming the cage door behind him with a clanging _bang_. He left the room without another word and no bloody counter-curse for whatever he'd done.

Lucius collapsed onto his side, curling up as tight as he could, gritting his teeth against the pain. He would not cry out. He would not give Black the satisfaction.

But sweet Merlin, it bloody _hurt_.

Five minutes later he felt a different kind of pain in his chest, like his heart was being literally torn in two. It was the kind of pain that made him gasp instead of scream, stealing his breath away. It was only brief and when it passed he was left feeling oddly empty, like someone had ripped away some vital part of him. He knew, instinctively, what it was. Black had transferred the Animancupium; James was no longer his.

He felt an unexpected spark of grief.

He wasn't sure how long passed before the door of the room opened again. The pain in his guts made it hard to gauge time. He looked around to see James approach the bars of the cage, Black lingering by the door, and felt that grief again at the fact that he couldn't feel James anymore. For years he'd always had this faint awareness of him; nothing so strong as he knew James felt—used to feel—of him, but still something. Now it was gone and he was acutely aware of its absence.

James pointed his wand at him. Lucius didn't ask what he planned to do, whether James intended to torture him in return for everything Lucius had done. He wasn't sure he could open his mouth without whining, screaming, or begging, and he refused to do any of those things.

To his surprise, James turned his wand in a circle and the pain in Lucius' guts instantly eased. The cramping faded and he uncurled, pushing himself to his knees but not yet able to stand.

"What now?" he asked, arms still wrapped around his stomach as the last of the pain faded. "Are you going to demonstrate your skill in the curses I taught you?"

James didn't answer immediately, just looked at him. Lucius could guess he was trying to figure out how he felt towards him. Lucius might not own his soul anymore, but he'd still kept the man locked in a cellar for fourteen years. They were connected in other ways than magic.

"No," James said eventually. "That would mean you still had control over me, and you don't."

"I may not own your soul, but you spent more of your life with me than you did with that blood traitor."

"Maybe, but I'll spend the rest of my life free of you. You'll spend the rest of yours in Azkaban."

"Only until the Dark Lord sees fit to release me," Lucius said.

James smiled then, a small, vicious smirk that Lucius had a feeling he'd learnt from him. "If he ever does. What use are you to him now? Ms Black has all your money, your home, your properties. You can't use me to spy on the Order any more and you managed to get yourself captured? Sounds like a liability to me, and the Dark Lord doesn't approve of liabilities."

"I will be freed," Lucius said, but he wasn't as confident as he sounded. Everything James had said was true.

James just shook his head, turned, and left. Black lingered just long enough to give Lucius a smug smile, before exiting and slamming the door shut behind him.

* * *

 **Disclaimer:** "Doors are for people with no imagination" is a quote from Skulduggery Pleasant.


	35. Chapter 35

**Chapter 35**

Harry had a horrible feeling Voldemort wasn't going to be happy that Harry had left saving Lucius long enough for Sirius to take James' Bond, but there was nothing to be done about it now. At least James was no longer under the control of a Death Eater, but Harry worried what it would do to their homelife. Would things change with James being Bound to Sirius? Would it let James remember what happened while they were kidnapped? Would it change Sirius? Maybe it would do him good, help him start to deal with Remus' death and do more than just mope about the house.

Harry learnt what happened when he got home from Malfoy Manor just in time for dinner, which was surprisingly pleasant. The tension of the past few days was gone and Sirius didn't even make an issue out of Harry being gone all afternoon. For the first time since Remus died, they managed to have nice dinnertime conversation. Sirius even managed to say Remus' name without running off to curl up on his own somewhere.

Harry wondered if he should free Lucius as soon as possible now the Order had no reason not to ship him to Azkaban, but he figured it was probably safe enough to wait until tonight. The Order might still try to get information out of Lucius and hand him over to the Aurors tomorrow or later. So he joined Sirius and James in a game of exploding snap and took the opportunity to ask, as offhandedly as possible, if James remembered anything now his Bond was transferred.

"No," he said with a sad shake of his head. "The memory charm is separate from the Bond."

"It can't be broken at all?"

"Not without driving me insane," James said dryly. "Dumbledore looked himself."

"That would be bad," Harry said, trying not to sound relieved.

It was almost midnight before they went to bed. Harry Wished Sirius and James to fall immediately into deep sleep, then made up a tracking arrow, looked up Diss in an atlas, and teleported there, invisible. He appeared on a patch of green by a small lake, and checked his tracking arrow to see where he needed to go next.

But the digits underneath Lucius' name read 107.7 miles. Harry stared down at it. Maybe there were two villages called Diss? But Snape had said Norfolk and the one Harry looked up was in Norfolk.

He hadn't bothered adding a compass marker, so he Wished for one and lay it flat on his left hand while he held the arrow in his right. It pointed north east. Harry wasn't too great at distances, but he was pretty sure the distance he'd seen in the atlas between Diss and the Norfolk coast wasn't 107 miles.

 _Norfolk is on the north sea,_ the voice noted. _Guess what's in the north sea?_

Azkaban.

They'd already moved Lucius.

 _I guess we get to see if you really can break someone out of Azkaban. At least we don't have to worry about Dementors._

* * *

In the end, it was entirely too easy. If Azkaban had any protections that Hogwarts didn't, they were still useless against him. He flew across the north sea, following the arrow and relishing at being completely invisible again. It was a comfort to hide like that, like he used to. It almost made him wish for the easy days of his childhood, when he'd been alone but safe, but he knew he could never go back to that. Last summer had been evidence enough; now he knew what it was like to have friends, he couldn't go back to that loneliness.

Azkaban came into view suddenly, eighty miles off the Norfolk coast. At a distance it was shrouded in fog, but once he got close enough the prison came into view through the mist. There was a dock on the south end and he cautiously flew down to it. There were no guards and he approached the door, but didn't enter. He might be invisible, undetectable to all and sundry, but people would still see a door opening by itself. Sure, he could look through to check for empty corridors and rooms, but it was long and risky. He wanted to do this without getting noticed; if possible, he wanted it to seem like Lucius had simply vanished from his cell. There one minute and gone the next.

 _Can we do that?_ the voice wondered. _Teleport him out. Anti-Apparition spells work on us, but not on objects we move. If we treat him as an object…_

Harry didn't know if it would work or not, but it was worth a try. He was never sure why anti-Apparition spells worked on him when he could bypass almost anything else. If it had something to do with being alive, then Wishing for Lucius wouldn't work…

And it didn't. It was a curious facet to his magic, but not something he had time to philosophise on right then.

He still had his tracking arrow in hand and an idea came to him. He took to the air again and flew around the building, watching the numbers and feeling smugly satisfied when they led him to a section of wall halfway up the building, on the west side. When he hovered close to the wall, it said Lucius was only two feet away. That made things nice and easy.

He stuffed the arrow into his pocket, looked through to make sure Lucius was alone in his cell and there was no one in the hall beyond, then Wished away the bricks.

Lucius, laying on the bed, cursed and threw himself off, hitting the floor and scrambling back until he hit the bars. He stared at the wall and Harry made himself visible.

"That was graceful."

Lucius' cheeks went pink. He stood up and brushed himself off.

"Instead of making cheap jibes, how about you get me out of here?"

Harry Wished, and Lucius floated off the floor.

"Hey!"

"Only way out," Harry said unapologetically, and floated him out. As he Wished the bricks back into place then turned to go, he noticed Lucius looked decidedly green. He didn't comment on it, just flew them both back across the sea. Lucius groaned weakly, but he managed not to vomit in the time it took them to reach a stretch of cliff on the Norfolk coast. He staggered when Harry set them down, bending over with his hands on his knees, taking several long, deep breaths.

Eventually he straightened up, tugging his robes and running his hands over his wind swept hair. "Tell anyone about this and I will kill you, Evans. Did you get my wand?"

Harry Wished for it and held it out. Lucius snatched it away.

"I presume we're to return to the hospital."

"Yeah," Harry said, and Lucius didn't even give a nod of acknowledgement before Disapparating. Scowling, Harry followed.

He wasn't wrong about Voldemort's displeasure. Despite the fact that Harry had got Lucius out of Azkaban, Voldemort still punished the both of them for losing James as a spy.

The next thing he knew, he was laying on an all too familiar bed and in all too familiar room, and the only thing that kept him from destroying the whole place was the post-seizure fatigue and a dull ache in his bones that came from the Cruciatus Curse.

Antonin was in a chair beside the bed, reading. He didn't look up until Harry sat, grimacing, and then he closed his book.

"Good, you're up," Antonin said with that nice smile of his. "You should probably go home, if you're capable. The Dark Lord is still rather angry with you and Lucius."

Harry rubbed his head, a headache throbbing in his temples. "What time is it?"

Antonin checked a sleek silver watch. "Just after one."

He hadn't been gone too long, then. That was good, even if James and Sirius were supposed to still be sleeping.

But he wasn't sure he was fit to teleport right then. Antonin looked to be heading out and the thought of being left alone in this room made Harry almost vomit, so he spoke.

"Why do you let him?"

Antonin looked back at him. "Beg pardon?"

"Why do you—the Death Eaters—let Vol- the Dark Lord torture you?"

Antonin returned to his seat. " _We_ ," he said pointedly, "do not 'allow' him to do anything. The Dark Lord does as he pleases. He is our master; if he sees fit to punish us, it would hardly do for us to object. If any Death Eater fails at their duty, they deserve to be punished."

"But he tortures you."

"Us. You're a Death Eater, too."

Harry scowled. "I didn't have much of a choice about joining, which means I have to let him do what he likes or my friends die. Why do the rest of you?"

Antonin gave a small, incredulous laugh. "I thought you were intelligent. Think about it, Harry. Even if any of us wanted to oppose him, which we certainly don't, none of us could. The Dark Lord is our leader because he is the most powerful of us. We follow him because we share his ideals and we trust in him to help change the world to a better place, to rid it of the Muggle filth threatening to overrun us. This is not an easy task, not when so many ignorant people oppose us and stand in our way. If we're to succeed in the Dark Lord's plan, every Death Eater, every follower, must perform their duties. Failure to do so could result in the destruction of us all and, therefore, the eventual destruction of our world. Failures like that have to be punished. We all understand that. Those who don't quickly learn."

 _He makes a good point,_ the voice said. Harry shook his head, remembering why he hated listening to Antonin talk. Only Antonin could make any part of him think the Cruciatus Curse was a good way to teach people to do better. Harry hated how much the voice agreed with him.

His head was feeling a little better—steadier, anyway, enough for him to teleport, but he wanted to ask one more question before he left.

"Does he ever sleep?"

"Who?"

"The Dark Lord."

"Honestly, I haven't the faintest idea," Antonin said, looking as if he didn't care, either. "But _I_ do, so kindly leave so I can stop babysitting and get to my own bed."

Harry scowled at him, but left without another word.

* * *

 _His shackles are stuck to the floor, keeping him on his knees. Whatever spell Bellatrix cast on him makes the metal around his wrists feel like a vice, the floor under him like splinters driving through him, even the light touch of her fingers on his bare back is like pins pricking deep into his skin. When she scrapes her fingers down either side of his spine, barely hard enough to leave a faint red mark, it's like getting gored by a hippogriff. He screams and she laughs._

"Stop!"

There was a soft thump, a grunt, and Harry opened his eyes, breathing hard. Across the living room, Snape picked himself up from the crash mats they'd conjured to stand in front of the bookcases and cover the floor.

"Are you okay?" Harry asked. Snape got up with a slight grimace.

"I'll live. I think that's enough for tonight."

Harry nodded, glad for the break. As Snape vanished the crash mats, he retreated to the kitchen for a glass of water and a chance to steady himself.

Despite saying he wanted a few days before they started practising Occlumency, Harry had gone to Snape the day after freeing Lucius from Azkaban. His panic attack while with Draco made it clear just how badly he needed this help, so every night for the past week Harry had snuck out to get a few hours training with Snape.

They'd started with unemotional memories, Snape teaching him how to redirect and hide certain thoughts and memories, and disguise doing so. Harry had the basics of that down, but this was as much psychology as it was magic and it was something he had to keep practising. Snape gave him some mental exercises to practise every night before he slept, intended to clear his mind of intrusive thoughts.

But while Harry had got the hang of hiding memories from an intruder, he couldn't hide the fact that he was hiding them. This, Snape said, would instantly draw Voldemort's attention and make him go digging for what was hidden.

"But he wouldn't be looking anyway unless he already knew I betrayed him," Harry had said, and felt his heart sink when Snape shook his head.

"The Dark Lord expects his followers minds to be open to him. If he finds they're hiding anything, he will assume it is a treachery to him. Even if it's not, he'll break through any protections to dig it out. Assume he is looking in your mind every time you speak."

That terrified Harry, knowing that if Voldemort found out about Snape then he was condemning his friends to instant death. So he practised and practised, but he wasn't doing well. As soon as Snape drew on the memories of Harry's torture, all his concentration cracked and he either failed to keep hiding the thoughts he was supposed to be concealing, or threw Snape out of his mind and across the room. Neither would be good against Voldemort.

Harry gulped down a glass of water and took a minute to get a hold of himself. He'd had only one major panic attack in the past week, but sometimes a small one would strike, forcing him to stop what he was doing and just breathe through it, waiting for the little shakes to stop. He found it helped to focus on restraining his magic, giving all his attention to not rotting anything in his vicinity instead of the thoughts that raced through his mind.

When he was feeling a bit calmer, he poured a shot of vodka and took it through to Snape, who'd settled in his armchair. Harry had tried some vodka himself earlier in the week and nearly spat it back out. Snape had been highly amused at his reaction.

Snape took the vodka, knocked it back, and said, "Tell me why you were late tonight. I caught glimpses of Dumbledore before you threw me out."

Harry sat facing him. "He asked me to go with him to help convince the new Potions teacher to come back to Hogwarts."

Snape frowned. "He needs children to hire new staff members now?"

Harry shrugged. "He—the new teacher, he's called Slughorn—didn't want to teach at first, but—"

"But Albus used you as bait," Snape figured. "Of course Slughorn would agree to come out of retirement for the chance to teach you."

"He kind of creeped me out. I felt like he wanted to put a Freezing Charm on me and put me on display."

Snape snorted. "He probably did. Slughorn collects people. He fosters relationships with celebrities and the well-connected so he can worm favours and gifts out of them."

"You know him?"

"He was my teacher. Is he taking over as Head of Slytherin, too?"

"No, Dumbledore said he's picked someone else for that, but he wouldn't tell me who."

"I don't suppose he mentioned who he's hired for the Defence position?" Snape asked with what Harry thought was forced casualness.

"Sirius and James."

"Is that a joke?"

"No."

"He hired both of them?"

"They can't be split up," Harry said with a shrug. "'Cause of the Animancupium. Plus, Dumbledore said James would help keep Sirius on track and not teach anything ridiculous, but James is still too twitchy around crowds to teach by himself even if Sirius lived in the castle with him."

Snape grumbled and called Dumbledore several names before fixing Harry with a pressing stare.

"You have something else on your mind."

Harry looked down. He picked at a loose thread on his jeans. "Dumbledore wants to teach me stuff."

Snape looked suddenly wary and suspicious. "What kind of 'stuff'?"

"I don't know. Information, I think. To do with the Dark Lord."

"I thought he told you to sit out of the war."

"He said he'd been thinking about it and decided I should have the choice to do something, if I wanted. It's not really fighting against him, but Dumbledore said he'd do everything he could to make sure the Dark Lord wouldn't find out." He paused, tugged at the thread, said, "The prophecy says I'm the only one that can defeat him."

"It does?" Snape's voice was urgent.

Harry nodded, recalling the words he'd heard last October. "It says 'either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives'. Dumbledore said prophecy interpretation is tricky, but that seems pretty obvious to me."

Snape said nothing, sitting back with a troubled expression.

"He said Vol- the Dark Lord has protected himself in ways that even I can't kill him yet," Harry went on. "Not properly, and the Assistant said that, too. What if getting this information is the only way to defeat him? And if the prophecy's right then I'm the only one that can do it and I need that information. But if I have the lessons and the Dark Lord finds out…"

"Then seven people die," Snape murmured.

It really was seven people now, with James Bound to Sirius.

"I don't know what to do," Harry said miserably.

Snape considered him. "Do you want to fight?"

Harry furrowed his brow. "What do mean?"

"Dumbledore told me that you claimed you wanted nothing to do with the fight against the Dark Lord after he escaped the Ministry last year. After his resurrection, you made no attempt to kill him, and you haven't since then."

"I don't want to be a murderer."

"Despite the fact that the Dark Lord murdered your mother? That he kidnapped you, used your own blood to resurrect himself? That he very nearly killed you last year, and three years before that?"

Harry hunched his shoulders, the whisper of _Coward, coward,_ in his head.

"I'm not judging you, Harry," Snape said, reassuring in his brusque firmness. "You're a runner, not a fighter. You always have been."

"I'm a coward, you mean."

"No. All too often, people who fight, die. I would rather have you run."

Harry shook his head. "If everyone ran away, Voldemort would never be defeated."

"Let the Order fight him!" Snape said, leaning forwards in his chair. "Forget the prophecy. Isn't that what you did before? Do what you have to, to protect your friends, and otherwise stay out of things."

"I can't do that!"

"Why? What obligation do you have to save this country from itself? Why not run away from this fight as you run from everything else?"

"Because I can't!" Harry cried. "I can't just let him take over the world. I should have fought him before because then none of this would have happened. I can't let him kill my friends and family and everyone else, and I have to make up for letting all this happen. I can stop him when no one else can and I can't pretend not to anymore. I just can't, okay? Someone has to stop him."

"And that someone has to be you?"

Harry inhaled shakily. "If I'm the only one that can."

Snape sat back. "Then you have to master Occlumency."

Harry blinked. "What?"

"If you're to take lessons with Dumbledore on how to fight the Dark Lord, you need to master Occlumency."

"But… I thought you didn't want me to fight."

"I don't," Snape said bluntly. "But it's not up to me and I lost the right to even give my opinion when I refused to acknowledge you as my child fifteen years ago. You don't want to let the Dark Lord win, which means you need these lessons, which means you need to master Occlumency. I will help you do that by summer's end, whatever it takes."

 _You know, I think I might actually start to respect your daddy after all._

* * *

Harry was woken the next morning by Padfoot jumping on his bed and licking his face. Harry shoved him away and pulled the covers over his head.

"Go 'way, 'm sleeping."

He'd come in late last night, later than usual. He and Snape had done another hour of Occlumency practice, until it made Harry seize, then Harry had come home and collapsed into bed, barely managing to Wish himself into pyjamas before passing out. He had no intention of getting up any earlier than he had to.

But then James' voice said, "You don't want to see your OWL results then?"

Harry peeked his head out and opened his eyes. Padfoot still sat on his legs and James stood by the bed, holding a creamy-white envelope, the wax on the back stamped with the Ministry seal. Suddenly wide awake, mentally if not physically, Harry sat up and took it from him, swallowing thickly.

 _Oh, don't be a twat about it. You know you passed everything with flying colours._

Harry bit his lip to avoid replying. He didn't know that. He could have failed his theory exams so badly it brought even his Charms, Transfiguration, and Defence marks into the fail grade. He'd had that seizure in Herbology, he always sucked at Astronomy and struggled with Arithmancy, and now he thought of it he was sure he'd botched his potion. He might have even failed the Ancient Runes and History; he could have temporarily lost his mind and answered all the questions wrong.

Padfoot transformed. "Open it, then!"

Hands shaking slightly, Harry did, drawing out two bits of parchment and unfolding them.

 _ORDINARY WIZARDING LEVEL RESULTS_

 _Pass Grades:_  
 _Outstanding (O)_  
 _Exceeds Expectations (E)_  
 _Acceptable (A)_

 _Fail Grades:_  
 _Poor (P)_  
 _Dreadful (D)_  
 _Troll (T)_

 _Harry Evans has achieved:_  
 _Ancient Runes: O_  
 _Arithmancy: A_  
 _Astronomy: A_  
 _Charms: O_  
 _Defence Against the Dark Arts: O_  
 _Herbology: A_  
 _History of Magic: O_  
 _Potions: E_  
 _Transfiguration: E_

His breath left him in a rush. "I passed everything! Four Os, three As, two Es."

Sirius hugged him, grinning and ruffling his hair affectionately. "Nice work, kid. Knew you'd do it."

Harry smiled. He hadn't been summoned by Voldemort all week, nor been to see Draco, and he left for Snape's only after Sirius and James were asleep, so things had been better between them than in the ten days before. Sirius' grief seemed to be improving, too, whether from his Bond with James or simply time. He still had periods of sullen depression, curling up and refusing to speak with them, but they were getting shorter and less often.

"What's the other bit say?" James asked, pointing to the second piece of parchment from the envelope.

"Other bit?" Sirius repeated. "What more is there?"

It was a letter. Harry assumed it was a standard 'hi, here's your results' kind of letter, but he read it through now and was surprised to find more than that.

"It's a recommendation for advanced NEWT classes," he said, "for History of Magic and Ancient Runes."

Sirius whistled. "Wow."

"I've never heard of advanced NEWT classes."

"Not a lot of people get in them," James said. "They're fast track classes recommended for people who pass the OWLs with ridiculously high scores and lets them sit the NEWT early. Lily took one in Charms."

Harry looked back down at the letter, some unnamed emotion filling his chest at that. It might not be the same class, but this was still something else that connected him to his mother. Even the voice's snide comment couldn't bring his mood down.

 _Well at least you'll die with two NEWTs._

Sirius gave him one last hug. "Nice going, kid. We'll get you something to celebrate, but don't forget you've got an appointment with Kirith in a few hours," he said, then he and James left.

Receiving his OWL scores really drilled home the fact that he would be returning to Hogwarts. He hadn't told anyone about it yet, but he wrote letters to his friends now. It took him most of the morning, trying to figure out what to say to them. He almost felt like he needed their permission to go back to Hogwarts, especially from Cid and Tyler. They might not appreciate having to share a dorm with him.

 _You won't,_ the voice pointed out. _You're moving up a year; you'll be in Draco's dorm instead… must you go back?_

"Yes."

The voice grumbled, then said, _You know who else you'll be sharing a dorm with now._

"Who?"

 _Theodore Nott._

Harry paused in the middle of his letter to Hermione. He couldn't easily bring Theo Nott to mind. He was a quiet, reserved boy, never hanging around Draco. Harry couldn't remember him well enough to figure out if he looked like his father or not. He wouldn't blame Theo for what Frederick did, but if they looked similar then Harry wasn't sure he could handle being around him much.

He eventually finished his letters and Wished them away. All his friends had seen enough of his magic now that he didn't bother with the hassle of finding an owl. He dressed—he was still in his pyjamas—then headed downstairs and found Sirius and James waiting in the living room.

"Time to go?" Sirius said, getting up from the sofa.

"I don't need you to come with me."

"I'm coming anyway."

"Sirius, I don't need it," Harry insisted, lighting the fire and reaching for the floo powder on the mantelpiece. "It's only Saint Mungo's, it's not like I haven't been going for years."

"I don't care, I'm coming with you."

"If you come, James has to," Harry said irritably. "It'll just be awkward. It's a check up, it's nothing important. Just stay here, can't you?"

"No, I can't," Sirius snapped. "I already fucked up looking out for you once this summer, I'm not doing it again. You're still a child, whatever you might think, and I'm your guardian. I'm coming with you and that's it."

"You—!" Harry cut himself off with an angry noise. He snatched up a handful of powder, tossed it into the flames, and almost tripped when Sirius grabbed his arm. "I don't need babysitting!"

Sirius ignored him, jerked him close, and pulled him into the flames. "Saint Mungo's hospital!"

It was not comfortable going through the floo with another person. Hary knocked his elbows several times, and they both almost fell when they shot out the other end. Harry wrenched his arm free, glaring, and stalked towards the stairs. He heard Sirius follow, but was glad the man didn't speak.

By the time he reached the third floor and checked in with the receptionist of the neurology department, James was also trailing after Sirius. Harry dropped into a chair in the waiting room, folded his arms over his chest, and ignored them both.

His mood wasn't improved when he finally saw Kirith, which Sirius at least agreed to let him do alone. She spent far longer on the MEEG than usual, and at the end of it all she said, "I want to do an MRI, and I want to see you again in three months."

"Three months?" he repeated worriedly. "Why so soon? Is something wrong?"

"Nothing too severe, but your MEEG results are a little concerning. It's no surprise after what you went through—" Harry looked away "—and it might well settle again with time, but I want to keep an eye on it."

When he left the room, he answered Sirius', "Go alright?" with a curt, "Fine."

He saw no reason to give Sirius something else to get protective over. Kirith set his appointment for 12th October, in the middle of the school term, so he didn't even have to tell Sirius he was having another check up so soon. He'd go straight from Hogwarts on his own.

When they got back home, Harry fetched his OWL results from his room and then told Sirius he was going to Malfoy Manor. He didn't wait for permission or acknowledgement before stalking out and teleporting away.

Draco came rushing out the front steps to greet Harry when he arrived, letter clenched in his fist, demanding, "Did you get yours? How did you do?"

Harry dug his own letter from his pocket and they swapped, only the call of a peacock filling the air as they read them. Draco got mostly Exceeds Expectations, with Outstandings in Potions and Ancient Runes, and a Poor in Care of Magical Creatures.

"It's no great loss," Draco said when they returned their letters. "It was that oaf Hagrid's fault anyway. If Dumbledore had hired a proper teacher I'd have passed with flying colours. Congratulations on passing everything."

"Thanks. I wonder how close the A in Arithmancy and Astronomy was though. I was sure I failed."

Harry stayed all afternoon. They spent several hours flying, Draco racing on his broom and Harry swooping about him. He'd never flown like this, just darting about for the fun of it, and he knew it was a risk to do so, but he figured as long as he stayed close enough to Draco then he'd be fine. Draco had a top of the line broomstick and a Seeker's reflexes. He'd manage to catch Harry if he seized and fell.

When they tired of that, they flew down to the flower garden, chatting amidst the rainbow of blooming flowers until dinner, after which they retreated to Draco's bedroom. They lay side by side in comfortable silence, Draco flat on his back with a hand on his stomach, Harry on his side, propped up on one elbow and just watching as Draco drifted into a doze. He'd never really looked at Draco like this before. He knew Draco was attractive—Draco never let anyone forget it—but he'd never taken the time to actually admire him.

It wasn't just his looks, either. In the quiet and the soft glow of the early evening light, Harry realised just how much this boy meant to him. Draco had so much faith in him, stood by him no matter what, accepted Harry with all his flaws. Draco said he loved him and in that moment, despite Draco being fast asleep and doing nothing more than simply being by Harry's side, Harry believed it.

Harry shifted closer and bent to kiss Draco's forehead. He let his mouth stay lingering against the pale skin as he whispered, "I love you."

He drew back and found Draco staring at him. He felt his cheeks turn instantly hot, but Draco just said, "I love you too," and kissed him firmly on the mouth, and Harry's embarrassment melted away.

The kiss deepened. Draco's hand came up to settle on Harry's hip. Harry was still propped up on one arm, but he let his other hand rest on Draco's chest, pressing flat to his robes. His own clothes were jeans and a shirt—long-sleeved, despite the summer heat—and he felt Draco rub over it then hitch it up slightly, just enough for his hand to slip under and settle on the skin above Harry's jeans.

Harry's breath hitched and he drew back. Not enough for Draco's hand to fall away.

"Alright?" Draco asked, looking up at him with concern. His fingers were stroking Harry's hip and Harry wasn't sure he even realised what he was doing. Harry twisted slightly and Draco glanced down then took away his hand. "You don't like that?"

"I…"

He wasn't even sure. It was a tiny little touch, but it was so unexpected that it threw him. Touch was a foreign thing to him. He knew his classmates were groping each other as often as they could manage—or so it seemed sometimes, when Cid and Tyler talked about it and he saw people snogging in classrooms or even the dark corners of the common room—but for him…

This was new. It was scary. He knew Draco wouldn't hurt him, he wasn't afraid of that, but… it was just new. He didn't know if he wanted it or not. He'd said he was thinking of it before, but actually doing it…

"It's okay," Draco said softly, moving his hand up to comb soothingly through Harry's hair instead. "After what happened—"

Harry wrenched away from him, scrambling up to his knees. "No!"

Draco sat, looking startled. He started to speak, but Harry put a hand over his mouth.

"Don't—it's not about that," he said, hearing his voice shake. "Don't make it about that, please. I don't want it to…"

He trailed off, no idea what he was trying to say. He couldn't let this—him and Draco, what they did together—be determined by his rape. If he let that happen now, it would dictate their whole relationship, his whole life, and he would never be free of it.

Draco took his wrist and Harry let him pull his hand down, holding it in both his own. "Talk to me," he said quietly. "We don't have to do anything. Just talk to me. My mother says communication is the most important part of any relationship."

"I just… I don't know if I want this."

 _If I say I don't, will that stop you?_

"Want what?"

"Touching," he mumbled, so quietly Draco didn't hear and he had to repeat it, and added, "But not because… even before I didn't—you know I wasn't—I know I said I thought I'd try but…"

He trailed off again, embarrassed and frustrated with himself for not even knowing what he wanted. Frustrated that, despite what he said, he was afraid getting raped had scarred him so deeply that he couldn't even stand being touched by the one person he trusted above all others.

"We could try it," Draco suggested. "You say you're not sure, so let's find out."

 _Or you could just not? What's to gain from it? Pointless waste of time if you ask me._

One of Draco's hands lifted to cup his cheek.

"I'll stop if you don't like it," he said, a hint of something—betrayal? hurt? offence?—in his voice. "I will never hurt you, Harry. I won't ever make you do something you don't like, I swear it."

"I know," Harry said, squeezing his other hand and forcing himself to smile, just a little. "I trust you, I do. I meant what I said." He felt his cheeks growing hot again, but said without hesitation, "I love you."

He glanced up, saw Draco smiling, eyes lit up. "So you'll let me help you find out if you like being touched?"

 _Why?_ the voice demanded angrily. _What purpose does it serve us?_

Harry closed his eyes, biting his lip to keep from answering aloud. 'I need it,' he thought, and only realised as he did how true it was. 'I need to know if I want it, if I like it. I need to know that if I don't like it, it's not because of what that man did to me.'

"Harry?"

He opened his eyes, met Draco's worried gaze. He wanted to say okay, but he was still nervous, so he put it off by voicing another concern.

"I have scars," he said. "From… they cut me, and they didn't heal it for days so it didn't fix properly."

"I don't mind. Are you worried I'll think it's ugly? I won't."

"You don't know that."

Draco's hand shifted and he trailed a finger over the lightning bolt on Harry's forehead. "I don't think this one's ugly."

"That one's tiny."

"It's not that tiny. It's pretty unmissable. Harry, I promise you, your scars won't bother me, but if you don't want to do this right now, we don't have to."

"No, I… I do," he said, and the voice sighed irritably but said nothing. "I'm just nervous."

Draco dropped the hand from his face and tugged his other free from Harry's grip, and started unbuttoning his robes. Harry's eyes widened.

"What are you doing?"

"Making it easier for you." He unbuttoned them then shrugged his torso out, letting them fall at the waist and leaving his chest bare. "Now it's your turn."

Harry hesitated a moment longer, grabbed the bottom of his shirt, and took a deep breath before tugging it up over his head. He dropped it to the floor and sat awkwardly, resisting the urge to hug himself as Draco looked him over. He didn't move when Draco reached for him, but Draco only took his left wrist and turned his arm. He frowned.

"Where's…?" He lightly touched Harry's forearm. Harry gently tugged his arm away.

"It's hidden, so no one sees it accidentally. I don't want to show you that."

"Why not?"

"I just don't."

Draco looked a little disappointed, but he didn't push it. He lifted his hand to brush his fingers against Harry's shoulder instead, and Harry's breath hitched a little.

"This okay?"

Harry nodded. Draco kept glancing between his face and his own hand as he trailed it down over Harry's chest. He ran his fingers along a scar cut diagonally just below Harry's left nipple

"They're not so bad. I don't know what you were worried about. Dittany can help with the scarring, you know. You could try using that."

"They put some on at the hospital," Harry said, and didn't mention the pot of it they'd given him to take home. He'd only used it on the teeth marks Nott left behind and been glad when they faded to nothing. Those had made him sick just to look at, but the others… It was a stupid thing, but he almost felt like getting rid of the scars would be pretending the torture hadn't happened. It had, nothing could change that, and in a way he almost liked having the scars left over to prove it. To prove he survived, even if not completely undamaged.

Draco shifted closer, hand moving down and around Harry's side to settle on his back. Harry lifted his own hand to lay against his chest, marvelling slightly at the newness of having someone else's body under his hand. It was such a simple thing and yet he felt like he was discovering a whole new world. Draco's chest was smooth and soft, slim with the barest hint of muscle definition. Harry let his hand move down, caressing his stomach, one finger dipping briefly into his bellybutton then moving on around his side, his other hand coming up to clutch Draco's other hip. He focused on that, on touching Draco, rather than the feel of Draco's hands on his own skin, and gradually started to relax.

Then Nott's face flashed in his mind and Bellatrix's laugh rang in his ears and he jerked away. It wasn't any specific moment, and he thought it might just be one of those random flashes of memory he would get sometimes, but it was enough to ruin what they were doing. He felt the beginnings of a panic attack and half fell off the bed, snatching up his dropped shirt and Wishing it on before he even realised he was doing it. He stepped away from the bed and stood trembling, wrapping his arms around himself and closing his eyes, focusing on trying to keep the panic attack growing worse. He counted his breaths, hands clenching in time with each inhale, and tried to stop his magic getting out of control.

It took several minutes, but eventually the shakes stopped and he no longer felt like he would ruin the carpet. He opened his eyes and looked at Draco, sitting on the bed, robes pulled back up, watching Harry sadly.

"Alright?" Draco asked quietly.

Harry nodded. "Yeah. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. It's fine."

Harry went over and sat back down. Draco's hand twitched but he otherwise didn't move. Harry took it, twining their fingers together.

"I did like it," he said, looking down at their joined hands. "The touching. It was nice."

"I'm glad."

"It was just… a bit too much right now. I'm sorry."

Draco huffed. "I told you, it's fine."

Harry glanced up and Draco smiled at him. Harry kissed him, surprising him with its suddenness, but drew back before Draco could start to kiss back.

"Thank you."

"For what?"

"Understanding. For just being you."

Draco smiled brightly then. "You don't have to thank me for that. I love being me," he said, and Harry laughed. "I love you, as well. Even more than I love being me."

Harry flushed, but didn't look away and didn't mumble as he said, "I love you, too."

* * *

"You were oddly quiet," Harry said when he was home and in the shower. "I'm surprised you weren't yelling at me to stop the whole time this evening."

 _I've given up trying to discourage you from that boy. You never listen to me. Anyway,_ it grumbled, _he makes you happy and I don't like dealing with you when you're miserable._

"You're so sweet," Harry said dryly, closing his eyes and sticking his head directly under the spray. He washed out the shampoo then moved onto his body, and realised then that he didn't feel quite as bad as he usually did in his showers. Every time he bathed in the past few weeks he kept trying to scrub away the memory of hands on his skin, but could never seem to get rid of the dirt he imagined Nott left on him.

But while he and Draco might not have done much, it was enough that Harry could force himself to think of gentle hands brushing against his shoulders instead of harsh ones gripping tightly. When he got out, he felt a little bit cleaner than he had since his OWLs.

The Dark Mark burned just as he finished dressing.

As good as things were between him and Sirius right now, he was certain that saying he was leaving when he'd barely come back would cause an argument, so feeling only slightly guilty he Wished Sirius and James asleep in the middle of their game of exploding snap.

When he arrived at the hospital, only Voldemort, Lucius, and Bellatrix were in the meeting room. Harry bowed and gave his greetings tensely, not forgetting that the last time he'd been there Voldemort hadn't been happy with him.

But there was no torture this time. Harry might almost have preferred that to being told he had to kill two people. He couldn't help blanching at the words, cringing away. It didn't go unnoticed.

"Dear me," Voldemort said in dangerous voice. "Are you flinching from your orders, Harry?"

He swallowed, forced himself to stand straight, and hoped his next words wouldn't get his friends killed. "I could change their minds," he said, voice coming out almost pleading. "You just need them to help smuggle stuff, I can make them do that."

 _We have to kill. What does it matter? These people are nothing to us. They may not have hurt you like your worthless daddy, but that's irrelevant. We've been given our orders, don't flinch from them, don't put your friends at risk. Don't put US at risk, because I promise you that after our lord and master is done torturing you and finally graces you with death, I will still be there. I will follow you to hell and I will make sure—_

"They die," Voldemort said. "You will kill them, Harry. I do not want their minds changed, I want people I can trust put into their place."

Harry ducked his chin, trying to ignore the ongoing rambling of the voice. It'd never talked so persistently before. He was going even more mad than he already was, but then, was it any surprise with the life he'd had this past month?

"Yes, my lord," he said. With the noise in his head, it was impossible to even try thinking of some way out of it.

He left with Lucius and Bellatrix, and the voice finally shut up. They arrived at the home of Diane and Timothy Marion, a married couple who worked for the Trading Standards Body, Spanish Division. A chubby, middle-aged pair, they were sharing a box of chocolates and a bottle of brandy when the three Death Eaters arrived. Diane screamed and Timothy told her to run for the floo, but Lucius pointed his wand at the fireplace and the pot of floo powder exploded.

"The Dark Lord sends his regards," Lucius drawled, then: " _Crucio!_ "

Timothy went down screaming. Diane screeched his name and lurched towards Lucius, fumbling her wand from her pocket, but Bellatrix pointed her wand at the woman and she somersaulted across the room, dropping her wand, to end up hanging upside down above her writhing, screaming husband.

Then Lucius and Bellatrix's wands jerked from their hands and over to Harry. He just managed to catch Diane and gently float her down to the floor, where she crawled over to Timothy and pulled him into her lap, sobbing.

Lucius and Bellatrix turned on Harry. All their faces were hidden by masks, but Harry could imagine Bellatrix's look of fury beneath it.

"How dare you," she snarled, advancing on Harry, who backed up until he hit the door. Lucius didn't approach, just scooped up Diane's dropped wand and watched Bellatrix bear down on Harry. "Do you think you can disobey the Dark Lord and get away with it just because he's not here?"

"I'm not!" Harry said, forcing himself to stand still, facing up to Bellatrix. "He ordered me to kill them, he didn't tell you to torture them!"

"You ignorant child. Why do you think we're here? It doesn't take two of us to babysit you. The Dark Lord doesn't begrudge us our fun."

"You should have a go," Lucius added, flicking his stolen wand at Diane. She was wrenched away from Timothy, both of them crying out, and thrown into a wall, where she stuck, a foot off the floor and wiggling like a pinned worm. "You'll find it's quite satisfying to inflict pain you've endured."

"I only want to inflict pain on the people that did it to me."

"You're not allowed," Bellatrix said immediately. "You try anything with me, boy, and—"

"Bellatrix, enough," Lucius interrupted. "Evans, you may as well expel your feelings on who you've got." He flicked the wand again and Diane hurtled across and crashed down at Harry's feet. "It really does make you feel better."

"Please," Diane sobbed. "Please, you can have anything, we have money and jewellery, you can take it all, just please let us live."

 _He might be right, you know,_ the voice remarked. _You might feel better to inflict pain on others. It's not like we can exact revenge on our abusers; we could at least ease the pain by knowing someone else feels what we did._

"Shut up," Harry whispered. Diane sobbed harder.

"I think this needs reporting," Bellatrix said, voice dripping with disgust. "Personally, I'm not surprised you're so weak. It's what happens when you're tainted with dirty blood."

"Be fair, Bellatrix," Lucius said, but he sounded amused. "Not all our fellows are cut out for the business of pain. Stay out of it then, Evans, but return our wands and you can kill them when we're done."

"You expect me to stand and watch you torture them?"

"Don't, and the Dark Lord learns of your treachery as soon as we return," Bellatrix said.

Harry looked from her to Lucius, then between Diane and Timothy. Timothy crawled over to his wife, grabbing her hand and shushing her, pressing kisses to her face even as he looked between the three Death Eaters fearfully. Diane clung to him, burying her face in his shoulder. It was kind of pitiful, but at the same time heart-warming that when they were facing death and torture they sought each other for comfort.

He could save them. He could pretend to kill them, alter Lucius and Bellatrix's memories, send the Marions… somewhere. Around the world with new memories to start a new life, safe from Voldemort's hate.

 _They're not worth it. They're not your daddy, and they won't be the last people you're asked to kill. Will you save every person he sends you after? Don't answer that._

Harry bit his lip, managing to keep his answer silent this time. 'Why are you suddenly so violent and vocal?'

 _I'm practical, you half-brained imbecile. Do you think the Dark Lord will dig deeper into your mind when your head is filled with my voice?_

That was a surprisingly good method of defence until he mastered Occlumency. Still…

'Why so eager to kill?'

 _It is inevitable,_ the voice said, sounding almost apologetic. _You know I speak the truth. You can't save everyone he sends you after. One day you're going to have to kill someone. It might as well be today._

Harry closed his eyes. He didn't want to do this. He wasn't sure he could. Why couldn't he save everyone? Why not fake ten deaths? A hundred, a thousand? As many as it took until—

CRACK.

Diane screamed. Harry snapped his eyes open. Lucius had crouched by her and Harry saw her knee was twisted at an unnatural angle. Timothy tried to attack Lucius, but Lucius jerked the wand and Timothy was flung across the room. Before he even crashed into the mantlepiece, Lucius touched his wand to Diane's shoulder, there was another crack, and she screamed again.

"Stop it!" Harry cried. Lucius didn't even glance at him, just moved his wand to her hand—

Harry disarmed him. But his attention was diverted and Bellatrix snatched her wand from Harry's hand, turning on Timothy and casting the Cruciatus. His screams were met with Diane's as Lucius pressed down on her shattered knee. Their agonised shrieks filled the room and rattled through Harry's head, a screeching background noise to the insistent commands of the voice, and Harry shook his head, trying to clear it, trying to focus and think, but the noise made him think of his own screams, of Snape's, of being back in that room, terrified and in pain just like the two people with him, and the voice was yelling—

The screams stopped.

Harry's breath hitched.

Diane and Timothy fell still and silent. Dead.

He'd killed them. He hadn't even meant to, not really. He'd just wanted to stop their pain, but the voice had been insistent that he'd never get away with faking their deaths. It would be too much hassle.

He killed them.

He turned aside, yanked off his mask, and vomited.


	36. Chapter 36

**Chapter 36**

Severus didn't hear Harry Apparate in, but he felt his pendant grow hot. He was in his bedroom and only had a page of his book left so he called out that he would be down in a minute and continued reading.

Half a paragraph from the end, his floor started to crumble. He dropped the book, snatched up his wand and darted across the unsteady floor, rushing out into the hall and down the stairs. In the sitting room, he found Harry on his hands and knees, sobbing so hard he could barely breathe through it, shaking all over. The carpet was completely destroyed and the concrete beneath was cracked, and his furniture and bookshelves were rotting away, books threatening to come crashing down.

Severus didn't want Harry to get used to him using Legilimency to halt his panic attacks, so he'd refused the times when one struck Harry during their training over the past week, but this was far worse than before. If Severus didn't put a stop to this then the whole house would fall down around them.

Harry didn't react to his presence, even when Severus crouched in front of him. Severus didn't touch him, knowing it would only end in him getting hurt, just aimed his wand at Harry's head and said softly, "Legilimency."

Harry's mind was a mess. Severus saw flashes of a man and a woman dying, Lucius, Bellatrix. A voice ordering him to kill. Voldemort congratulating him. And again, the man and woman dying, falling abruptly still and silent over and over and over.

He had to steady the memory, put it back in order so Harry would stop fixating on just the deaths and let it settle in place with the rest of his memories, then Severus could smooth over the emotions. He couldn't stop Harry feeling them completely—he wouldn't; Harry needed to feel this now or it would be worse later—but he settled them until the panic stopped.

Severus withdrew from Harry's mind and Harry collapsed to the floor entirely, still sobbing, but the rotting had stopped. Severus repaired what he could, just to ensure the house wouldn't collapse, then warily put a hand to Harry's hair. When he wasn't thrown across the room, he more confidently started petting him. It was all he could think of to do.

When Harry's sobs reduced to hiccups, he sniffed, wiped his nose on his hand, and said brokenly, "I killed them."

"I know."

"I'm a murderer."

"You did what you had to."

Harry jerked his head away, sat up, and lashed out, slamming a fist into Severus' chest. "That doesn't make it any better! I killed them! I took away their lives!"

Severus grabbed his wrists, firm but not restrictive, grip loose enough Harry could pull away if he tried, and his gaze was unforgiving as he met Harry's. "And you will take more. You will kill and torture and do horrible things that will give you nightmares for the rest of your life, but it's what you have to do."

Harry drew his hands away, wrapping his arms around himself. "Why are you saying that?" he asked in a small voice.

"Would you prefer I lied to you as I've done your whole life?"

"I…"

"You have people who will comfort you and do it a damn sight better than me. You can go home and know that Black and Potter will smile and pat your shoulder, and for a while you can tell yourself everything's fine, but the faces of the people you've killed will haunt you. I know they will because the people I've killed still haunt me. I will not lie to you about this, Harry. I'm not going to tell you that everything's going to be okay because it's not, and if you don't have someone to remind you of that then it'll be that much worse when you realise it. The people whose lives you took today are only the beginning, but you chose to put your friends' lives before theirs and you have to live with that."

"I've got no right," he said, head down, eyes averted. "Why should their lives be worth more than the people I killed? I'm not God, I shouldn't choose that."

"Do you really think that man and that woman are worth more than Lyle, Villiers, and Longbottom? Than Granger and Weasley? Even Black or Potter?"

"No…"

"That is not something to feel bad about," Severus told him.

"But I didn't have to kill them. I could have found some way to save them. Snuck them away to get new lives somewhere else and changed Lucius and Bellatrix's memories."

Severus reached out, making sure Harry saw him, and gripped the boy's chin to tug his face up to look at him. "Loathe as I am to say this, that voice in your head was right. Doing that would have been far too risky."

"How do you…?"

"I heard it when I was using Legilimency."

"It made me kill them."

"It encouraged you," Severus corrected, a little harshly, "but do not start placing blame on it. You killed that couple, you have to accept that, like it or not."

Harry closed his eyes. "It's not fair," he whispered. "It's not fair, I never asked for this. I didn't want any of this."

"But it's what you've got and you can't change that. You'll do as the Dark Lord asks and it will haunt you, but your friends will live."

"What if I can't? What if it's too much?"

"Then they die," Severus said simply.

"I don't want them to die."

"Then do as the Dark Lord orders." He dropped his hand from Harry's chin to his shoulder, squeezing it. "You have your options, Harry. Either you obey the Dark Lord, or your friends die. They're poor options but it's what you've got. You have to decide how much your friends' lives are worth."

* * *

"Tell me it's worth it."

 _It's worth it._

"Is it?"

 _If you're going to doubt me, why ask? You never care for my opinion anyway._

Harry had no response to that. It was the night before his birthday, just over two weeks since he'd murdered the Marions.

He'd been summoned twice more in that time. The first time was to force a Ministry witch to give up information about the protections on Amelia Bones, and just hours ago he'd been called on to join in the killing of Igor Karkaroff. Some other Death Eater had captured him, but they'd all been summoned to torture him before Voldemort killed him. Harry gathered hurting a traitor was meant to display their own loyalty. It made him sick to watch and terrified of being discovered himself, but his Occlumency training was progressing well. If Voldemort had been looking at his mind tonight, he hadn't found anything.

 _It's worth it. You love your friends, you're very fond of Sirius, you even like James. You don't want them to die. These peoples' lives are worth it to keep them safe._

"You didn't want me to join," he pointed out. He lay in bed, not sleeping, though he'd have liked to, except he knew his dreams would be full of Karkaroff's screams and the sickening state his body had been in by the time Voldemort killed him. His Occlumency wasn't good enough yet that he could stop his nightmares, especially not so soon after something happened.

 _That's because you didn't want to, and because our esteemed lord and master is a bully and we hate bullies._

"I'm a bully now."

 _Bullies cause misery and suffering simply because they can; we're just doing what we have to. We're protecting ourselves and what's important to us and that is something I agree with whole-heartedly._

"What's important to _me_. You don't care about my friends or Sirius or James. You don't care about anyone."

 _I care about you._

"You sound like Snape."

 _That's insulting. Your daddy might say he cares and maybe he's even done a few things to make up for his poor parenting, but I am heavily invested in your well-being and always have been. For the time being, obeying the Dark Lord is good for your well-being. Losing your friends would likely shatter your already fragile mind even further, as would much more torture._

"I'd have thought that's good for you. I'd end up with more voices in my head. You'd have friends to keep you company."

 _I don't need friends. I am the only one that needs to live inside your head._

* * *

He managed to get a few hours sleep that night until, as he'd predicted, nightmares of Karkaroff woke him. He showered, dressed, and went downstairs to find a pile of gifts waiting for him on the dining room table.

There was one from Cid and Tyler, which he hadn't really expected, but although both their names were on the label it was written in Tyler's hand. There was a letter with it, which he opened with some trepidation despite the gift. It was signed only from Tyler, but it spoke of both of them. Tyler was spending the rest of the summer with the Swift family, although he wasn't settling in well with them. He had nothing kind to say about his step-mother, Cid's mum, and he wasn't too happy with his father, either.

But he also mentioned that he wasn't holding a grudge over what had happened to him. He said Cid's anger over it was easing, too, but that he was glad Harry wouldn't be sharing a dorm with them in September. Harry tried not to feel too hurt by that.

There were gifts from Hermione and Neville, too, but that wasn't as surprising. He'd already had letters from them. Hermione had passed all her OWLs with Outstanding marks, except Defence which she only got Exceeds Expectations. Neville was pleased to have got six passing grades, including an Outstanding in Herbology and Exceeds Expectations in Defence and Charms. They both looked forward to sharing classes with him next year.

Draco's present was by far his best that year, though: Nyneve's journal.

Harry would have left immediately for Malfoy Manor, except when he said he was leaving Sirius replied, "Make sure you're back in time for dinner. We're going out."

Harry paused on his way out the kitchen, clutching Nyneve's journal. "What?"

"It's your birthday, we're going to a—"

"No," Harry said. "No, Sirius, I don't want that."

Sirius frowned. "It's your birthday. Don't you want something special?"

"No."

"We've hardly got to spend time with you these past two weeks. You never talk to me: can't you manage to spend one evening having a nice meal with me?"

"It's my birthday," Harry pointed out angrily. "I shouldn't have to do something I don't want to."

"You should spend it with your loved ones!"

"Draco _is_ one of my loved ones, and at least he doesn't make me do things I don't want to."

"I'm not ma- look, I just want to spend some time with my godson."

"Fine, then I'll be back for bloody dinner, but I'm not going out. Get a takeout," Harry snapped, then whirled and stalked off, ignoring Sirius' yells for him to come back.

When he reached Malfoy Manor, he threw himself at Draco as soon as he got to the front steps, where Draco came to meet him, and kissed him hard.

"How'd you get it?" he demanded when they broke apart.

"What?" Draco said, looking a little dazed.

"This." He was still holding the journal. "The Dark Lord vanished it, how'd you get it?"

Draco smiled. "The Dark Lord didn't vanish it permanently. After you told me about it, I wrote to my father and convinced him to let me have it."

"Thank you."

Draco kissed him, arms tightening around him. Harry opened his mouth to the kiss, fingers tangling in Draco's hair, and pressed closer.

He stiffened when Draco's hand slipped under his shirt and Draco pulled it back out, breaking the kiss.

"Sorry."

Harry licked his lips, said, "It's fine."

Surprise flickered in Draco's eyes, then a hopeful little smile curled his mouth. "Yeah?"

Harry nodded. "We should go inside though if… if you're gonna… feelmeup."

He said that last bit as a hurried mutter, but Draco grinned broadly so he tried not to feel too embarrassed about it. They went through the manor with only a brief stop by the conservatory for Harry to say hello to Narcissa, and then headed up to Draco's bedroom. Once there, Harry stood awkwardly, not sure what to do next, but Draco pulled him into a kiss and Harry relaxed into it.

"You sure you're happy with this?" Draco asked, one hand playing with the hem of Harry's shirt. Harry nodded.

"I want to."

"Do what exactly? Touching like before?"

"Yeah."

"Alright. I'm not wearing the kind of robes I can just drop to the waist, though."

Harry drew back slightly, looking him up and down. "Do you mind if I transfigure them?"

"Into?"

"Jeans and t-shirt."

Draco's mouth twisted. "Muggle clothes."

"They are easier to… and I promise I'll transfigure them back."

"I suppose," Draco conceded, and jumped when Harry made his Wish. He wriggled. "Feels so weird. And constricting. Stop laughing at me."

"I'm not laughing at you," Harry said, holding back a grin.

"Uh huh," Draco said sceptically, and kissed him.

They took it slow, touching each other with their shirts on for a while before removing them. Whether it was that or he was just luckier this time, Harry had no flashbacks, no panic attack. His mind was fixed solely on Draco—Draco's hands, Draco's body, Draco's face. He was soft and gentle and warm and Harry was surprised to find himself growing aroused, especially when he imagined what they must look like from an outside perspective.

They'd moved onto the bed, Draco lying with Harry over him, and at the thought of watching them—without lingering on the oddity of watching himself make out with someone—Harry became abruptly aware of a tightness in his jeans. He tried to draw back slightly, afraid of Draco feeling it, but then Draco pressed his own hips up against him, and he realised he wasn't the only one getting aroused.

They both stopped. Draco's hips dropped down and Harry pushed himself up to his hands and knees. He could feel himself flushing, but Draco's cheeks were pink, too.

"Too much?" Draco asked.

"Maybe," Harry said.

"Do you want to stop?"

Harry thought about it, then asked, "What would happen if we didn't?"

"Didn't stop?"

Harry nodded.

"Um… I don't know." He looked uncertain for a moment, then said slowly, "I wouldn't want to go all the way right now, and I'm guessing you're not ready for that either."

"All the… you mean… _do it_?"

A glint of amusement entered Draco's eyes. "Do it?"

"You know what I mean."

"Sex," Draco said bluntly, and laughed when Harry blushed. "How do manage to be friends with Cid Villiers if you can't even hear the word sex without blushing?"

"Shut up," Harry muttered, poking his chest. "And no."

"No what?"

"I'm not ready."

"Okay. So… what do you want to do?"

Harry shrugged. Draco rolled his eyes.

"If you don't want to… go any further… then we should probably stop and find something else to do. But if you're okay with some grinding…"

"Um… I think… I think I'm okay with that." Or at least with finding out if he was okay with it. He was aroused enough that, even after their conversation, he wanted to climax rather than make it go away. All it took was imagining the two of them from an outside perspective and his jeans became uncomfortably tight.

He figured he probably shouldn't mention that to Draco, though. Getting more excited over watching than participating was probably insulting.

Draco smiled. "Okay then," he said, and tugged Harry down to kiss him.

They built up to it again, not taking as long as before but getting comfortable as they carried on. Harry tried not to think too much about what they were doing, to just let himself feel—feel Draco's hand sliding down his side and around his back, feel Draco's chest under his own fingers and his nipple growing hard, to feel Draco's hips press up against him and pressing down with his own.

When Draco clutched at his hips and thrust up, breathing short and sharp, Harry drew back to watch his face. Draco whimpered slightly and lifted his head to kiss him, but then dropped back down. Harry stroked his cheek and ground his hips down, more interested in the reaction it got from Draco than how it felt to himself. Draco groaned, fingers clenching on Harry's hips, and Harry did it again and Draco cried out, shuddering against him.

Watching that, seeing Draco's head tilt back and his mouth open and his eyes flutter shut, did far more to send Harry over the edge than the physical sensations against him. He ducked his head and buried his face in Draco's shoulder as his own orgasm came over him.

Draco's arms came around him after, one stroking gently over the small of his back, the other moving up to bury in his hair.

"You liked that," Draco said.

Harry nodded. He figured he probably shouldn't mention that he enjoyed watching Draco the most. "Did you?"

"Hell yes," Draco said, and Harry laughed. "Can I have my robes back now though? Also, clean us up? Otherwise I have to get up and change, and I don't want to move from here."

"Lazy butt," Harry said, but cleaned them up. He had to Wish Draco's shirt onto him before transfiguring it and his jeans back to robes.

Draco kissed his temple. "I'm not lazy, I just don't want to leave your side."

"You're not at my side, you're under me."

"Even better," Draco said with a grin, and Harry snorted, but he wouldn't deny he was happy right where he was, too.

* * *

Not for the first time since putting Yaxley in his cage, the Assistant sat outside it, trembling as he ignored a deep desire to vanish the bars, unmute Yaxley, and accept whatever punishment came to him. Yaxley couldn't give him orders, but his desire to be free still echoed down the Bond.

Yaxley, with nothing better to do, had taken to using the Bond to constantly summon him. The Assistant could resist it for a while, but it was like a chain in his chest pulling him back to his Master, growing more painful the more he ignored it, and eventually he had to give in.

He'd tried letting Yaxley hurt him, thinking that if the man was allowed to vent his frustrations then he'd stop calling for the Assistant. He blinded himself so he couldn't see any mouthed orders, nor have written ones shoved in his face, made sure the bars were impervious to vanishing, transfiguration, or anything else that would enable Yaxley to escape. As always, he assigned Dobby to keep watch in case Yaxley got the better of him.

"If he kills me," he told the elf, "then leave him here to starve."

Then he entered the cage and gave Yaxley his wand.

When Yaxley finally wearied of abusing him, the Assistant crawled out, patched himself up, nicked some pain relieving potions from the Hogwarts infirmary, and went for a much needed spa day.

Yaxley didn't stop calling.

It was time for a new plan.

* * *

Harry's booklist came the day after his birthday. He already knew one of the books that'd be on it; he'd helped Sirius and James pick out what textbooks to assign for Defence. Despite it, he didn't go to Diagon Alley as he hadn't heard back from Ollivander about his new wand yet.

He was summoned again the following Sunday. The meeting was in the large room this time, although there were only seven others instead of the thirty or so who'd been there the first time. They all had their masks on, but Harry recognised Lucius and Antonin's, and Bellatrix had her hood down so he could tell her just by her hair, but he had no idea who the others were.

He was ordered to accompany them to kill an entire street, with specific orders that he was to engage in the torture beforehand. It made his stomach turn, but his Occlumency was good enough now that he could force down his disgust and horror. He would do what had to be done to save his friends' lives.

The others already had the location and Harry had to take Antonin's arm to let him side-along Apparate him rather than go by himself.

"Don't try to dual Apparate with me," Antonin warned him before he left. "I'm no good at it and one of us will Splinch; just let me take us."

Before Harry could ask if he could go with someone else instead to avoid potentially leaving something behind, Antonin squeezed his arm and they vanished.

Normally when he teleported, there was the briefest sensation of painlessly falling to pieces before snapping back together again somewhere completely different. This time, it was like getting stuffed through a tight rubber tube. He'd felt the same sensation when the Assistant took him from the Three Broomsticks in June, but he'd forgotten about it with everything else that happened. Evidently his teleportation really was different to normal Apparition.

He staggered when they reappeared on a street, groaning slightly and feeling nauseous. Why were all normal methods of magical travel so unpleasant? It made him glad for his own brand of teleportation.

"That is Fleetwood's home," Lucius' voice said, drawing Harry's attention. "No one is to try entering it if they value their extremities."

He looked at the house Lucius pointed at, and almost threw up.

They were in Bath, on Tyler's street.

"Bella, you and Nott take that one," Lucius said, pointing at the house next to Tyler's, then the one at the end of the cul de sac. "Jugson, Gibbon, in there. Antonin, Evans, over there. Avery, with me."

They started for the houses he'd indicated, wands already drawn. Harry didn't move. Between their location and the mention of Nott's name, he was frozen in place, battling to keep down a sudden panic attack.

Antonin realised he wasn't following and stopped, turning towards him.

"You realise this is a test of your loyalty," he said and Harry jerked his head up to look at him. "The Dark Lord is well aware you're familiar with people living on this street. Our intelligence says Fleetwood's son isn't staying here at the moment, but the boy in that house—" he pointed to the one Lucius and Avery were heading to, the Stones' home "—is also in your year at Hogwarts."

"A-Alex," Harry said. "Alex—you expect me to let them kill him?"

Antonin looked around. The others had reached their targets and were breaking into the houses now. He pushed his mask up to sit atop his head and stepped closer to Harry, lowering his voice.

"I shouldn't tell you this, but Lucius has orders to let the family live… unless you refuse to torture and kill the Muggles in this house." He gestured at the one Lucius had ordered them to. Charlie's house, the girl Tyler and Alex were friends with. "The Stones are a pureblood family, if a young one, and they've never stood against us. The Dark Lord doesn't want them killed, so they're merely hostages for now. Lucius is waiting for my confirmation that you've killed the Muggles, and if he doesn't get it then he will kill the Stones."

Harry closed his eyes, clenching his fists. It took every bit of Occlumency he'd learnt in the past few weeks to keep his despair and anger from overwhelming him. He hadn't thought he'd ever have to kill someone he knew, but it was either Charlie—a girl he'd met only a handful of times—or one of his schoolmates.

 _It's not even a question,_ the voice said without sympathy. _I don't care for any of them, but the Muggles will die no matter what. Antonin will kill them if you don't, so you may as well get the job done and save yourself the guilt of the Stones' death… and the torture we'll suffer for disobeying._

Harry opened his eyes and looked at Antonin. "Why are we killing them?"

Antonin cocked his head. "I told you—"

"No, why kill _all_ of them?" Harry gestured around at the five houses. "Everyone except Marcus Fleetwood. Why are we killing them? It can't just be to test me."

"Aside from the fact they're Muggles and therefore deserve to be killed? The Dark Lord wants to send a message to Marcus Fleetwood."

"Cursing his son isn't enough?"

Antonin smiled at Harry like he would at a young child that didn't understand a simple concept. "That had nothing to do with this. Fleetwood's boy was cursed because of _you_ , not because of him."

Even though he knew it was true, having someone say it so bluntly made him feel awful. He didn't say anything else, just glanced at the Stones' house then started walking. His feet felt like blocks of cement, but he forced himself to pick them up and walk unsteadily towards Charlie's house. Antonin pulled his mask back down and followed.

Disabling the intruder alarm was easy. It was late enough that everyone was in their beds, but at a Wish from Harry they all came traipsing down to the large family room. As well as Charlie and her parents, Johnny was there, the Muggle boy Harry remembered meeting twice. Given that he and Charlie were both in their underwear when they arrived, Harry assumed they'd made up and got back together. Mr and Mrs Bennett looked surprised by Johnny's presence, but they had more to worry about right then than their daughter sneaking her boyfriend into the house.

They heard a crash from somewhere else in the house and Antonin went to investigate it. Harry thought of Wishing the family dead right then, quickly and painlessly, but he'd been ordered to torture them and if he didn't then Antonin would have the Stones killed.

"Look what I found," Antonin said. Harry looked around to see him levitating an old man into the room, dropping him onto the floor beside the rest of the family, now sitting terrified with their wrists tied and their mouths gagged. The old man seemed to be made of wrinkles and liver spots and each breath came in a wheeze. He struggled to even look around the room. "He's practically dead already."

The man coughed and wheezed. "I've… still… got… some life… in me… yet…"

Antonin pushed his mask up. He looked amused. "So you do. Shall we see how long you last, old man? I do enjoy a good experiment. Let's see how well that muddy heart of yours last when you see what I do to your… granddaughter, I'm assuming?"

He pointed his wand at Charlie, who gave a muffled scream and pressed her bound wrists against her stomach and drew her knees up. The old man gave a wordless noise of objection.

"Oh," Antonin said softly, his smile widening. He flicked his wand and Charlie jerked up to float a foot off the floor. Johnny made a startled noise behind his gag, staring wide eyed, and her parents screamed. Mrs Bennett moved as if to go to her.

"Stop her," Antonin ordered Harry, gaze never leaving Charlie. Harry forced Mrs Bennett back down again.

Tears spilt down Charlie's face and she still had her hands pressed to her stomach, like she wanted to protect that from them more than anything else. Antonin vanished her gag.

"Please," the girl begged instantly, "please don't hurt my baby."

Harry's eyes went wide. Johnny and the Bennetts all made stunned noises, Johnny especially.

Antonin chuckled. "I thought so. You can't be very far along. You've not even the slightest bump yet."

"Please, don't kill me, please."

"And your boyfriend here had no idea," Antonin went on, ignoring her pleading. "Nor your parents." He tutted and shook his head. "What must they think of you. What about you, old man?" He made a tiny gesture with his wand and Charlie spun slowly. "This girl must be no more than sixteen, unwed, and she's already with child."

"Stop it," Harry said, making a Wish that had Charlie dropping to the floor. He didn't stop her as she instantly crawled over to her mother, just conjured clothes onto her and Johnny, making them both jump.

"Is this your refusal to do as ordered?" Antonin asked, sounding unconcerned if it was. "Shall I send a message to Lucius already?"

"No. But you said I had to torture them. You don't have to humiliate her."

"Humiliation is a form of torture, Harry. But… as you wish." He gave a half bow and gestured around the room. "Torture them. Any way you like, but you're not to kill them until they beg for death."

"Are you enjoying this? You told me you only tortured people as an experiment."

Not that he'd ever believed that, but he was putting off what he knew he had to do.

"This is an experiment," Antonin said. "I get to see how long it takes someone to beg for death with your brand of torture. I'll compare it to the times of our colleagues."

"They're not my colleagues," Harry snarled.

"They are, like it or not." He pushed back his sleeve and looked at his watch. "Do begin. I'm curious to see how you compare to the others."

Harry suddenly wished Antonin was just a sadist like Bellatrix. Somehow it felt worse to have this whole situation viewed as an experiment.

He looked over the five terrified Muggles as he considered the best thing to do. He refused to be 'creative' in his torture—to do anything bloody or viciously violent, like he knew the others often did. He wanted this whole thing over and done with as quickly as possible, but that would mean causing intense amounts of immediate pain and he balked at the thought.

 _Do it. If you start with less pain and build it up, they'll be more resilient. By the time you reach a pain level that makes them beg for death, it'll be more than if you simply start high. Begin with the worst pain you can cause and they will soon break._

It was horribly logical. Swallowing thickly and hating himself, he made a Wish.

Even gagged, their screams were almost enough to make him stop as soon as he started. He knocked his mask off as he slapped his hands over his ears, closing his eyes to the sight. He forced himself to keep it going for as long as he could bear—long enough to drive him to tears—and then stopped it. He lowered his hands and opened his eyes, looking over them. Mr and Mrs Bennett, Charlie, and Johnny lay gasping and whimpering, twitching slightly. The old man was utterly still, eyes open and staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

"That's no surprise," Antonin said, looking at the old man. "His heart probably gave out. No matter. Shall we see if the others want to die yet?"

Tears still dripping beneath his mask, Harry vanished the gags. For a moment their was nothing, then:

"Kill me."

It was Johnny, gasping the words out desperately.

"Don't do it again, please, just kill me, I'd rather die."

Antonin looked at his watch, but when he opened his mouth to speak, Harry said sharply, "Don't. I don't want to hear it."

Antonin glanced at him, nodded. "Kill the boy then."

Harry did. With only a puff of one last exhale, Johnny went limp and still. Charlie sobbed.

"Let me kill them," Harry said to Antonin. "I tortured them already."

"Not enough. Do it again."

"No!" Mrs Bennett cried. "God, no, not again, please. Just kill us."

"You don't get to speak for your husband and child," Antonin said. "Only yourself."

"I-I d-don't w-want to d-die," Charlie sobbed.

"Let her go," begged Mr Bennett. "Kill us, but let her go. She's pregnant, for God's sake. How can you kill a pregnant girl?"

"After what Harry just did, she's probably not anymore," Antonin remarked, and Harry had to turn aside, choking down a sob as Charlie wailed. "I'm no expert, but that sort of stress on the body so early in the pregnancy? I'd imagine a miscarriage is almost guaranteed."

"You're a monster!" Charlie shrieked, and leapt up with surprising speed. She stumbled slightly, but still managed to grab Harry's face in both hands, manicured nails digging into his cheeks. "You're both monsters and you'll burn in hell!"

 _Well, she's not wrong._

"Shut up," Harry said, because they were both right. He was going to hell, demon deal or not, and he would deserve everything that happened to him once he got there.

Antonin flicked his wand and Charlie was wrenched away from Harry. Her nails gouged his cheeks deep enough to splash blood on the carpet.

"Punish her for that," Antonin ordered and Harry wiped at his cheek, wincing slightly.

He shook his head. "It was your fault, not hers."

"Just kill me," Charlie raged, eyes filling with tears even as she glared angrily at Harry. There was no recognition in her eyes as she looked at him. "If you've already killed my baby, you might as well kill me too."

Harry did, before she could change her mind. Mrs Bennett screamed her name and threw herself over the limp body. Mr Bennett roared with fury and surged to his feet, cursing so much that Harry almost missed Mrs Bennett's quiet, "Kill me."

It took Mr Bennett a moment to realise his wife died. When he did, he stopped short of attacking Harry. He looked around at the roomful of dead, and his face crumpled. It was a despair so deep that he didn't even cry.

"Go on then," he said, voice utterly devoid of any emotion, like his heart had been killed with his wife and daughter. He didn't look at Harry or Antonin. "Finish me off as well."

His death brought such a sudden, overbearing silence to the house that Harry thought he would suffocate. He ran out the house and stopped in the street, retching and sobbing, gasping for breath.

By the time he pulled himself together, the others joined him and four Dark Marks painted the sky a sickening green.

* * *

Only when they were back at the hospital did Harry realise the significance of _four_ Dark Marks. He said and did nothing as they reported to Voldemort and received praises, but when he dismissed them Harry followed Lucius, Antonin, and Bellatrix down along the hallway from the meeting room instead of heading for the exit.

"Shouldn't you be going home?" Lucius sneered at him, pulling off his mask and running a hand over his hair.

"You killed them."

Lucius said nothing, just raised an eyebrow at him.

"Alex Stone and his family. You killed them, didn't you?"

"Well I certainly didn't sit down for a nightcap with them," he said, then frowned as several hairline fractures cracked through the floor. Bellatrix and Antonin, further ahead and talking intimately, Antonin's arm around her shoulders and Bellatrix's hand on his arse, stopped moving, glancing around.

Harry looked past Lucius to Antonin. "You lied to me."

"There's no point getting upset about it now," Antonin replied with that smile of his that Harry hated so much, the nice one. It quickly vanished when the floor beneath him splintered, sending him and Bellatrix staggering.

"Evans!" Lucius snapped. "Do you want to earn the Dark Lord's wrath?

Harry yelled wordlessly, but he reigned in his magic, fixed the damage, and stormed off. Once outside, he teleported away and reappeared in Snape's kitchen, where he yelled again, and the room blew apart around him.

When Snape came in, Harry was knelt on the cracked linoleum, surrounded by splintered fragments of the dining table and cupboards, with various foodstuffs splattered over the walls, floor, and himself. At first Harry didn't even realise it was Snape—he looked like an upper-middle aged man with salt and pepper hair and a short beard—and gaped up at the apparent intruder, so stunned that he didn't react, but then the man's features twisted and morphed and Snape's appearance grew out of them.

"Have you been out?" Harry blurted.

Snape lifted a messenger bag over his head and set it by the door, then waved his wand to repair a chair and sat in it. "The Polyjuice was complete. I made contact with one of the dealers I know. What happened?"

"I got angry."

"I can see that. I meant your face."

Harry touched his cheek, feeling the scabs and flaky dried blood on it, and told him what happened. After, he added, "You know what the worst part is?"

"What?"

"I haven't cried." Harry sat against the door into the garden, staring at his hands in his lap. "I liked Alex. We weren't really friends, but he was nice enough, but I haven't cried that he's dead." He paused, feeling self-disgust boiling inside him, but no tears wetted his eyes. "I haven't even cried over Charlie and her family."

"You've just destroyed my kitchen."

"But that's anger. I _killed_ them. She was _pregnant_ and I killed her, and I tortured her first. What kind of monster does that and doesn't even cry about it? I'm not upset, I haven't had a panic attack or anything, I'm just angry."

"Who are you angry at?"

"I told you—Antonin lied to—"

Snape shook his head. "Who are you really angry at?"

Harry looked up at him, confused. Snape said nothing, just stared back, giving no hints or clues.

 _Yourself,_ the voice said, and Harry knew it was right.

"Me. I'm angry at me. I believed him." He leant back against the door, closing his eyes. "I believed him because it made it easier to kill that family. I could pretend that I was saving someone."

He laughed bitterly. Snape said nothing and Harry sighed. He was so tired. Not the kind of tired that came from physical exhaustion, but tired in his soul, the kind of tired that no amount of sleep could ease. He was sixteen years and five days old, but he felt like he'd lived a lifetime already. If he didn't know so surely where he was headed in the afterlife, he might look forward to dying. But there was no rest for him in death. Not that he deserved any.

"Seven for seven," he murmured.

"What was that?"

Harry opened his eyes, staring up at the ceiling. "I've killed seven people now. Seven dead to keep seven alive."

Snape said nothing to that. What was there to say?

Harry sighed, looked around. He made a Wish and the room repaired itself in just a few seconds. There wasn't much to be done about the food he ruined, but he could recover enough coffee beans for Snape's breakfast in the morning and he could go shopping for more food then.

"I don't want to go home," he said after.

"Why not?"

Harry shrugged.

"I'm too tired to do any Occlumency training with you," Snape told him.

"I don't want to do that anyway."

"Then what do you want?"

"I don't know."

Snape sighed irritably.

"Can I stay here?"

Snape raised an eyebrow. "Black will worry if you're not there in the morning."

"I'll send a note. He'll probably be annoyed, but…" He trailed off with a shrug.

"I've no spare bed," Snape pointed out. The second bedroom had been converted to a lab, an Undetectable Expansion Charm making it suitably sized for such.

"I probably won't sleep anyway," Harry said. "I just don't want to go home right now."

"As you wish." He rose, pushed his chair under the table, but paused before leaving. "You should heal those cuts."

Harry looked down.

"Keeping them won't bring those people back to life."

"I know that."

"Then heal them. You would have to explain how you got them, and they'll do you no good to keep." When Harry said nothing, he added harshly, "You won't forget what you've done tonight, Harry, even without those wounds to remind you."

"It's not fair. They're dead. I shouldn't get to just magic away the injuries she gave me."

"Life isn't fair. Curious questions about how you got them won't make anything easier for you. I've seen enough of your mind to know you'll guilt yourself quite enough without them. Heal them, or I will."

Harry glared up at him. Snape glared back. For a moment neither of them moved, just stared at one another, until eventually Harry sighed.

"Fine," he muttered, and Wished himself healed and the blood gone. "Happy now?"

"Tremendously," Snape said dryly, and turned on his heel. "Try to keep the noise down, whatever you decide to do. Good night."

* * *

Olivia Swift was a bitch.

Tyler knew she was strict and domineering. He'd heard enough from Cid about her over the years, and he'd met her once last summer. She'd been very polite at that time, though there was an unmistakable sense of unforgiving expectations, and Tyler thought Cid might have been exaggerating when he complained about her, but it turned out that politeness was reserved for guests. Now that Tyler was her step-son, he was subject to the same strictness that Cid complained about so much. Dylan might have been the breadwinner, but Olivia was the real head of the household and she ran it like a prison.

After nearly ten years growing up with Marcus and having the freedom of a home where his guardian was often absent, the Swift household was unbearable. He didn't like being told when to get up, what to wear, when to eat, what to eat. His first argument with Olivia, on his very first day in the house, was over the fact that he was vegetarian and under no circumstances would he eat any meat. Not because of any overwhelming love of animals, but just because he couldn't stand the taste and texture. It wasn't like it even caused Olivia any problems; the Swifts had a house elf that did all their cooking and it was more than happy to make up a vegetarian dish for Tyler at every mealtime.

There were many more argument over various topics. Tyler floo called Marcus to complain and say he wanted to go home, but Marcus convinced him to at least try and last the summer. He and Professor Dumbledore had put up a lot of protections on the Swift home to protect him and Cid from any further Death Eater attacks—though neither boy could see why; Voldemort didn't need to break in to hurt them—and Marcus was extremely reluctant to let Tyler live with the freedom he was used to.

It was hell to deal with. Olivia never said or did anything explicit, but Tyler got the very clear impression that she didn't like him. Not because he wasn't her child or because she didn't like Dylan having a child from another relationship, but because Dylan acknowledged Tyler when he was a bastard. Tyler realised after a few snide comments that she thoroughly disapproved of children born out of wedlock.

Dylan was of no help. He made token objections if called upon for support, but quickly caved to a harsh word from his wife. He doted upon Layla, sneaking her treats and gifts and smiling benignly when Olivia called him out on it, but seemed to think Cid and Tyler needed a woman's firm hand to become proper men. He didn't say anything about Tyler calling him by his first name, which was good because Tyler wasn't seeing him as a father any more than he saw Olivia as a mother. He certainly wasn't what Tyler imagined in all his years of wondering what his real father was like.

Their last argument was about Charlie Bennett and Olivia's refusal to let Tyler attend the funeral. The whole family had gone to the Stones' funeral, but Olivia said Charlie, as a Muggle, wasn't worth it. Tyler called her a racist bitch. That got him locked in his room for the night with a Bubble Mouth Hex and no dinner.

While the rest of the family were eating, he put on some of the Muggle clothes Olivia wouldn't let him wear around the house, packed a bag, downed a vial of anti-sickness potion, and climbed out the window.

He walked ten minutes until he reached somewhere sufficiently quiet, and then reluctantly threw out his wand hand. There was a _bang_ , and the Knight Bus appeared in front of him. A sulky young woman Tyler recognised as being a few years ahead of him at Hogwarts jumped down and gave an unenthusiastic introduction before asking where he wanted to go.

"Bath," he told her, and gave his street name before adding, "How much to move me to the front of the line?"

"I don't take bribes," she sniffed, which was bollocks because Tyler had never met a fellow Slytherin that didn't take bribes.

"I get travel sick. Really bad."

"Twenty-five sickles," she said, and he handed it over. He might have taken his potion, but he still hated travelling.

Five minutes later he stepped off onto his street. He looked up at his home as the bus vanished. None of the windows were lit, but that didn't mean Marcus wasn't home. He might just be in one of the rooms at the back of the house.

Tyler turned away from it, looking around at the rest of the houses. They were just as dark, but he knew they _were_ empty. He felt his throat tighten when his gaze fell over the Stones' house. He'd known them since he was six years old, almost ten years, and Alex had been his best friend in the time before Hogwarts. They'd drifted apart a bit once they started school, separate houses leading them to different friends. For Tyler, at least; Alex had never got on as well with the other Hufflepuffs as Tyler did with Cid and Harry. Maybe it was why he'd been so happy to get a baby sister.

Tyler swallowed the lump in his throat, blinking back tears. He hadn't much cared for the youngest Stone, but what kind of monsters killed a kid barely past her second birthday?

His eyes slid over to the next house. He and Charlie had always had an on-off friendship, sometimes falling out over the stupidest little thing and then making up again later. They had a playground marriage when they were seven and then got divorced a week later because Tyler put chewing gum in Charlie's hair. They spent the summer after his third year going out and he lost his virginity to her in the treehouse at the end of her garden, then she dumped him because she didn't want a long-distance relationship.

Without thinking about it, he started towards the house, going around the side and clambering over the garden fence. He ran over to the biggest tree, the one with the treehouse, knowing where it was even in the darkness—the street lamps didn't shine this far and the moon was new—and hauled himself up the ladder.

He was a foot from the top when he realised the trapdoor above him was open. He stopped, staring up at it, heart pounding in his chest. Who was up there? Was anyone or had Charlie just forgotten to close the trapdoor last time she was here? That made more sense, he thought; or perhaps he was just trying to convince himself there was no danger. But Death Eaters wouldn't come back, surely; they'd killed everyone already, there was nothing here for them.

He swallowed, looked down and back up again, then slowly climbed a few more steps until he could carefully peek his head through the trapdoor. It was pitch black inside, not even the starlight managing to break through the two windows. If there was anyone hiding inside, he couldn't see them. There was a torch on the shelves, he knew, but they were on the far side, and that was assuming Charlie hadn't taken it out or the batteries hadn't died.

He hesitated a moment longer, then hauled himself the rest of the way up, got on his hands and knees, and crawled across the floor, feeling for anything in his way, one hand in front of his face so he wouldn't smack into the shelves when he reached them.

His hand just brushed the wood of them when he heard a rustle of movement. Next thing he knew, he was pressed flat to the floor, a hand in his hair pulled his head aside, and a set of teeth sunk into his throat. He yelled, tried to struggle, but the weight on top of him was unmoving. He grabbed the hair of his attacker—long and thick; probably female he figured—and tried to pull them away, but they only bit down harder on his throat.

Then they jerked back. They shifted and he thought he could make a break for it, but they just grabbed him and rolled him over, sitting on his hips, one hand on his shoulder to hold him down with surprising strength. He heard a small scrape of noise, a click, then blinding light in his face. He squeezed his eyes shut, heard a gasp.

"You…"

It was a woman's voice. The light shifted slightly and he cautiously opened his eyes. He saw the outline of a body that took form into an average-sized woman as his eyes adjusted. He couldn't quite make out her face properly, but got the impression of someone perhaps thirty years old, looking down at him like she could hardly believe he existed. When she snarled, he saw fangs, but he hardly needed that to know what she was. The biting had been a big giveaway.

"You look like him," she whispered, a mixture of longing and hatred in her voice. "So much…"

Tyler licked his lips and tried to unobtrusively slide his wand from his pocket. "Like who?"

"Who are you?" she demanded. "What's your name?"

"Tyler. Tyler Lyle."

Her breath hitched. "How—"

His wand came free. He shoved the tip under her chin, and said, " _Inpello_."

She was thrown off him and across the treehouse to crash into the far wall. Tyler scrambled up and over to the trapdoor, missed his footing when he first went down, managed to catch the rung below and started climbing as fast as he could.

He was half-way down when the vampire jumped through the trapdoor above him. She grabbed him on her way past, they crashed onto the ground, and Tyler had no chance to try getting away before she had him on his feet, shoved him against the tree, and buried her teeth in his neck again.


	37. Chapter 37

**Chapter 37**

Tyler woke up in bed. His real bed, at home in Bath, and it took him a moment to realise that wasn't right. He sat up quickly, then stopped and groaned at a headrush so bad it made his vision waver.

"Stupid boy," Marcus' familiar voice scolded gently. Tyler felt his hand on his shoulder before his vision cleared enough for him to see Marcus properly, pushing him back down. "You lost a lot of blood, you need to rest."

Tyler lay, reaching up to touch his throat and finding it wrapped in bandages.

"What happened?"

The wrinkles along Marcus' forehead deepened as he frowned. "You don't remember?"

"No—I mean, yeah. I remember getting attacked, but after. I thought she'd kill me."

"I wouldn't kill you."

Only Marcus' hand on his shoulder kept Tyler down. His gaze snapped around and he saw the vampire woman sitting in the furthest corner of his room, on his desk chair beneath his wall of photos, arms folded over her chest and legs crossed.

"What the fuck!"

"Tyler, relax," Marcus ordered. "I won't let her hurt you again."

"Get her out of my bedroom!"

"Tyler, listen to me, I need—"

"No! Get her out, I'm not listening to anything until she gets the fuck out! She tried to kill me!"

"Tyler, stop!"

Tyler stared at him, confused. Marcus had always protected him; why was he letting a vicious monster near him now?

"She's here because there's a reason she attacked you, and you both deserve an explanation."

"What fucking explanation does _she_ need?"

"If you will stop shouting, I'll tell you. And please stop swearing so much."

Tyler glared at him, knocking his hand away. "Get on with it then."

"Please do," the vampire agreed.

Marcus sighed, moving his hand to his lap. "Very well. First of all, let me introduce each other. Tyler, this is Danielle Baines. Danielle, this is Tyler Lyle."

"He already told me his name," Danielle snarled. "I want to know who he _is_."

"Wait, I know that name," Tyler said, frowning. "You've mentioned her before. Where…?"

"Danielle used to be my fiancée," Marcus said.

Tyler remembered. "You said she died during World War Two."

"I thought she had. Her home was destroyed during an air raid and her body never found. I had no idea she might still be alive until today."

They both looked over at her, seeking explanation. She scowled, but spoke.

"I almost died. One of the bombs came down directly on the house and I hadn't reached the shelter yet. I was struck across the head and that was the last thing I remembered before I woke up in some underground room with a handful of other newly made vampires. We were to be soldiers for Grindlewald."

Marcus winced. "I'm sorry, Danielle."

Tyler sat up, ignoring the brief burst of dizziness the movement caused. "What are you apologising to her for?"

"Do you think I wanted to work for that man?" Danielle shot back before Marcus could answer. "He wanted to enslave my kind!"

"Good! Vampires deserve nothing better if they're like you!"

Danielle snarled at him, started to rise, but Marcus thrust his other hand out, pointing his wand at her. She sat back again. Marcus lowered his hand and looked to Tyler, but didn't put the wand away.

"She's not talking about vampires, she's talking about Muggles. Danielle wasn't a witch before her undeath."

"You were engaged to a Muggle? You never mentioned that."

Marcus shrugged. "It wasn't important. She knew about magic; I told her of it so she wouldn't go into our marriage ignorant."

"You broke the Statute of Secrecy? Lose your job for that."

"I didn't work for the Ministry then, and what they don't know won't hurt them."

"Who cares?" Danielle broke in. "I've told you how I survived. Tell me who he is. How is he related to Nathaniel?"

"Who's Nathaniel?" Tyler asked.

Danielle said nothing, averting her gaze, expression softening slightly for the first time since he woke up.

"Nathaniel was the reason Danielle and I never wed," Marcus said. "Ours was an arranged marriage. Although my family were all wizards from five generations back, we had land, money, and titles granted by King William the third and we had a presence in the Muggle world."

"My parents were very eager to get rid of me to someone rich," Danielle said, voice dripping with bitterness.

"The Baines' fortunes were waning," Marcus explained, sounding apologetic. "Danielle's great-uncle gambled away much of their money and they weren't recovering well. They owed my parents quite a bit of debt, and Danielle was promised to me to pay it off. I realise how awful that is," he added at Tyler's incredulous expression. "I objected, but if I hadn't agreed the engagement would just have been moved to my brother, who was far less pleasant."

"What happened to John anyway?" Danielle asked somewhat begrudgingly.

"He was killed by Death Eaters in seventy-six."

Danielle caught his gaze. "Sorry."

Marcus accepted the sympathy with a nod, and continued explaining to Tyler, "Six months before our wedding, Danielle met Nathaniel at a homeless shelter where she did voluntary work. They fell very much in love, and while I would have wed her before, I didn't have the heart to keep her from true happiness. I broke the engagement and helped her set up a home to hide from our respective parents. I even offered to pay for their wedding, but…"

"We would have paid for it ourselves," Danielle said pridefully.

"Would have?" Tyler repeated. Danielle looked away, pain flickering across her face.

"The war broke out," Marcus said. "Nathaniel was Muggle and of age; he was drafted into service."

"He died?"

Marcus nodded. "Presumably, yes. He went missing in forty-two, while on the front lines, but his remains were never found. By that time, Danielle had already died—or so I thought, anyway—the year before."

"Right," Tyler said, looking between them. "Look, this is all… really sad and everything… but what does it have to do with me?"

Danielle looked at Marcus. Marcus looked at Tyler. "Nathaniel's surname was Lyle."

Tyler inhaled sharply, felt his eyes widen, glanced between the two adults. "He was… am I…?"

Marcus shook his head. "You're not his direct descendent."

"We never had the chance for children," Danielle said. "So he's from Elliot's boy?"

"Yes," Marcus agreed, and explained to Tyler, "Nathaniel had a younger brother, Elliot, who had a son named Benjamin. Benjamin was your mother's father."

"My grandfather? The one that disowned mum?"

Marcus nodded.

Danielle shifted. "Why'd he do that?"

"Because he's a bigger bastard than I am," Tyler said.

Danielle raised her eyebrows at that. Marcus rolled his eyes.

"Tyler was born out of wedlock. Benjamin disapproved."

"Typical Lyle," Danielle said, lip curling.

Tyler scowled. "What's that meant to mean?"

"Parents disowning their children. Nathaniel's did, Elliot went and got himself killed in a brawl when Ben was just a toddler, now Ben did it too. Bet your mum did as well."

"My mum died," Tyler snapped. "She didn't abandon me. It wasn't her fault."

Danielle looked doubtful. "You should probably avoid having kids in any case."

"Danielle, stop it," Marcus scolded.

She turned angry eyes on him. "I'm only speaking the truth. That boy's a Lyle, and a wizard to boot. That makes him twice as bad."

"I'm a wizard."

Danielle just looked as if this proved her point.

"What have you got against wizards?" Tyler asked. "We've never done anything to you."

"Are you joking? Grindlewald tried to enslave us, You Know Who is trying to kill us all, for the second time. Numerous wizards have tried to kill me since I was turned. It was the whole reason Nathaniel's parents abandoned him. As far as I've seen—"

"Wait," Marcus interrupted, staring at Danielle in shock. "Nathaniel's parents?"

"They were wizards. It's the whole reason they kicked him and Elliot out, because they were both squibs. I thought you knew that."

Marcus looked stunned. "No, you never mentioned."

"Oh. Must have slipped my mind."

Tyler furrowed his brow. "Hang on, so that means my… great… great? Grandparents were magical?"

Marcus shook himself off. "Yes. Not that it matters to anyone that cares about purity; it's too far back to be worth anything."

"So how did he—" Danielle nodded her head at Tyler "—end up with you?"

Marcus put off answering until he'd called for Mitzy to bring them tea. Tyler noticed Danielle flinch slightly when the elf appeared and vanished. She refused a drink, but Marcus poured a cup for himself and Tyler, who gratefully accepted it, and Marcus finally answered the question.

"I kept a bit of an eye on Benjamin after you and Nathaniel died," Marcus eventually explained. "Nothing overt, he was living with his mother's family, but I looked in on the family from time to time. When Victoria—Benjamin's daughter, Tyler's mother—was disowned, I tried to help her out. Gave her money when she needed it. When she died and Benjamin refused to take Tyler, I adopted him myself."

"Why?" Danielle pushed. "What was it to do with you?"

"Nothing, really," Marcus admitted. "But you were my friend, you loved Nathaniel, and Nathaniel loved Benjamin. I suppose with you gone, I felt I owed it to look out for the boy that would have been your nephew. I never married or had family myself, and I suppose when Tyler's mother died…"

He trailed off with a shrug.

Danielle looked at Tyler. "Where's your real father?"

Tyler scowled down at his tea and didn't answer.

"I don't think that's important," Marcus answered for him. "I think we've had enough history. I want to know about tonight. What were you both doing at the Bennett house?"

Tyler grit his teeth.

"What do you think I was doing there?" Danielle snapped. "My whole family was murdered, Marcus."

Tyler jerked his head up, spilling tea over the sides of his cup. "Your _what_?"

She gave him a cool look. "My family. Richard was my brother."

"Who's Richard? Wait, was that Charlie's great-grandfather that came to live with them this summer?"

Danielle nodded curtly. "What were _you_ doing there?"

He shrugged.

"An answer, please, Tyler," Marcus said. "You ran away from the Swifts for it."

Tyler grit his teeth, then spat, "That bitch wouldn't let me go to the funeral. She said they weren't worth it, because they were Muggles! I couldn't stay there, Marcus. I was coming home, but when I got here I just wanted to look in the treehouse once more."

Marcus sighed. "I understand that, but you shouldn't have run off like that. It's far too dangerous out there right now."

Tyler opened his mouth to reminded him about the Word of Death Curse and the fact that everywhere was dangerous for him right now, but he glanced at Danielle again and stopped. Instead he said, "Whatever. Is she leaving yet?"

Marcus looked around at Danielle, who sniffed, but said, "I don't want to stay in the home of wizards, anyway. Besides, I need to find the one that killed my family."

Tyler looked over. "Can you do that?"

"The Ministry is hunting the Death Eaters," Marcus said warningly, gaze also fixed on Danielle.

"A bunch of useless wizards," Danielle derided.

"You never used to hate magic this much, Danielle."

"You mean when you were the only wizard I knew? Imagine that."

Marcus frowned, but didn't argue with her.

"Can you really find the ones that killed them?" Tyler asked again

"Maybe. I found a little bit of foreign blood in the room where they died. If I can find who it's from…"

"If you do, will you kill them?"

"Slowly," she said.

"Good, then I'll forgive you for attacking me."

"Tyler!"

He looked at Marcus, setting his jaw. "They killed my friends and their families. They deserve to die just as painfully and slowly as they killed Charlie and Alex."

Marcus shook his head. "More death solves nothing."

"It gets revenge," Danielle and Tyler said together, and Marcus sighed. He vanished the tea tray and their now empty cups, took his cane from where it rested against the foot of Tyler's bed, and stood up.

"It's time you left, Danielle. I'll be back soon," he said to Tyler.

When they were gone, Tyler slumped against his pillows, staring up at the sloped ceiling above him. His whole life he'd known almost nothing about his biological family; his mother had only ever told him she'd been disowned for getting pregnant out of wedlock, and that was it. Now, in the past two months, he'd learnt more about them than he ever had. It just sucked that most of it was crap. Getting Cid for a step-brother was the best that came out of it all, and Layla as a half-sister was alright, although she was a bit of a spoilt brat at times.

Marcus came back five minutes later and sat down with a small groan.

"You okay?" Tyler asked, sitting up again.

Marcus nodded, smiled. "Just old. Seeing Danielle looking so young reminds me just how old. And those stairs. I think it's time I put some charms on them, or perhaps just install a lift."

"Charmed stairs are cooler," Tyler told him, and he chuckled.

"Well, we'll see. Now, lets talk about you running away."

Tyler scowled.

"Dylan told me you argued with Olivia. Over Charlie's funeral?"

"She's a complete bitch, Marcus, and Dylan doesn't stand up to her, ever. I hate her. I'm not living there any more, I don't care if he is my father. _You're_ my dad."

Marcus smiled. "We'll have to figure something out then. I don't like leaving you home alone, especially not now."

"I don't think the Death Eaters are gonna come after me again," Tyler pointed out. "And if you make me stay with the Swifts I'll run away again."

"I won't," Marcus promised. "That's very clearly not an option any longer. But I didn't just mean the Death Eaters. I didn't mind leaving you alone before because the Stones and Bennetts were nearby to look in on you occasionally."

Tyler clenched his hands in his lap. Despite being personally cursed by Voldemort, he was more angry at the Death Eaters for murdering Alex and Charlie. Voldemort might scare him, but the Death Eaters pissed him off.

"I'll take a few days off work, for now," Marcus said. "Perhaps I can get the last few weeks until you go back to Hogwarts."

"Thanks."

"You are my son. I fear I've been a little too absent through the years. Perhaps I'm a little late to make up for it, but…"

"I didn't mind," Tyler told him honestly. "I liked having freedom. You're a good dad, Marcus."

Marcus smiled. "Well. If you say that I certainly can't have been too bad. How do you feel about having Cid here for the time being, as well?"

"Really? Why? Also: yes, definitely. But why?"

"It seems he took your runaway as an inspiration for his own rebellion. He says he won't live with his mother if you don't have to."

"But he's not going to his dad's?"

Marcus sighed wearily. "Eric feels too guilty over the kidnapping to let Cid stay with him. Olivia also refuses to let Cid go back to his father's; she's threatening to apply for sole custody. I think letting him stay with us for this summer should settle things down."

Tyler nodded vigorously, then stopped because it made his head spin. "Yeah, let's do that. I don't like Olivia or Dylan much, but Cid's still my step-brother and my friend."

Not to mention he could really do with the company right then. It'd been bad enough dealing with Charlie and Alex's deaths halfway across the country. Being back home, with their empty houses just across the street, made it worse.

* * *

The eighth person Harry killed should have been the hardest, but it was the easiest. He spent a week after killing the Bennett family agonising over it, knowing there was going to be another person he was asked to kill and unsure if he could tip that balance between the number of people killed and the number of lives he was saving.

He was called once in that time, but it was only to plant some illegal documents, stolen by a recently recruited Death Eater who worked in the Ministry, in the home of one of the Minister's personal aides. The aide was arrested for possessing documents he shouldn't have, and was replaced by someone that the Death Eaters controlled.

When Harry was finally called to kill again, his target was a wizard who ran a new orphanage for magical kids. Harry was horrified at first, but then he found out why he was being sent there—the man was abusing the children in his care.

"You know as well as I that the Ministry doesn't care about us orphans," Voldemort said to Harry after giving his orders. "We owe it to those children to deal with this monster. Make an example of him."

A small part of Harry realised that there was probably more to this than what Voldemort was telling him, but he had no inclination to ask for more details. Only one thing concerned him—"What about the kids?"

"Leave them. I believe they have a matron, though if she is willing to overlook the abuse then perhaps she ought to die as well. I will leave that choice to you."

Harry went with only Antonin, who, on their way out the hospital, stopped Harry to explain in calm, reasonable tones that he'd lied about the Stones only for Harry's sake, to help him do what he had to. It sounded so perfectly reasonable, and all the while Antonin smiled that nice, convincing smile of his, that Harry found himself believing it and forgiving the man.

Only later would he think to wonder if this, too, was a lie, but he never confronted Antonin about it because whether it was a lie or the truth, it'd worked. Harry had done what had to be done and Antonin's lie about the Stones had helped. Mostly Harry just felt angry at himself still for believing it, and eternally wary of whatever else Antonin's silvertongue might trick him into doing.

Harry was worried that Antonin would scare the children, intentionally or not, but he proved surprisingly good with them. Better than Harry, in any case, but he was too angry to worry about it. There were a dozen kids in the orphanage, all under ten years old and all with bruises on them. The oldest, a girl of nine, had oil burns on her hands, and a five year old boy was screaming to be let out of a trunk when Harry and Antonin arrived. When Harry broke open the locks, he found the boy trapped in with three huge rats.

After that, he left the children to Antonin and went to deal with the manager. For the first time, he not only didn't feel bad about torturing someone, but took pleasure in it. He wired the man's jaw shut first—he didn't want the kids to hear him screaming—and by the time Antonin came through to check on Harry, the man was a sobbing wreck, pawing at Harry's feet and looking up at him with pleading eyes. Harry shoved him in the same trunk the five year old had been in, shut the lid, and Wished the rats inside into a frenzy until the thuds and thumps of the man's struggles stopped.

He left the matron, although Antonin suggested killing her. She was an aging woman bearing bruises herself and the children didn't seem afraid of her, for which Harry was glad. He didn't want to kill someone when he had the choice not to, but he wasn't sure he could forgive someone who stood aside while children were hurt. He just left her with a firm warning that he would be back if she hurt the children herself, satisfied by her terrified nod of agreement.

He didn't feel bad about any of it until three o'clock in the morning, when he woke up from a dream where he enjoyed torture as much as Bellatrix Lestrange. For the first time in weeks he had a really bad panic attack. They'd stopped as his Occlumency got better, only the minor ones still hitting him, and those were easier to bear and at least didn't make him destroy things.

Now he sat in his bed shaking and gasping, struggling to keep his magic from destroying the bedroom around him. He knew it would pass like they always did, but that didn't stop his heart pounding or lessen the tightness in his lungs or stop his thoughts racing with fear.

When it passed, he checked Sirius and James were still asleep, and left for Spinner's End. He felt a little guilty for waking Snape, but he needed his honesty right then. He needed to tell him what he'd done and hear Snape say he wasn't a monster.

"If you ever cross that line, I will tell you," Snape promised him. "For now, can I go back to sleep?"

* * *

Harry finally got a letter from Ollivander a week before the end of the holiday, so he took another trip to Diagon Alley to pick up the new wand and his supplies for the new year.

"Here you are," Ollivander said, presenting the wand to him. "Acacia, eleven and a half inches—just a touch longer than your last one—with a core of basilisk scale. Professor McGonagall was able to provide me with one, which has kept the price down."

 _Oh yes,_ purred the voice as Harry took the wand, _yes, I like this one._

When he waved it, an entire swarm of butterflies of every variety came pouring out the end and with another flick, they vanished.

Harry grinned properly for the first time in months. "It's _perfect_."

"Hm," Ollivander said, looking satisfied. "That'll be ten galleons, six sickles."

By the end of the month, Harry's kill count was up to ten and he'd helped kidnap Florean Fortescue. On the night before he returned to Hogwarts, he was called back to kill him, and as he stood over the cooling corpse Voldemort praised him.

"I saw the horror in your eyes when you returned from your first mission. I'm sure it was harder to kill someone who hadn't wronged you so badly, as your worthless father had, but now you do it with ease. You're a true Death Eater, Harry. I knew you would be an excellent addition to my ranks. It's almost a pity you'll be at Hogwarts these coming months, but I'm certain that if I need you, you'll find a way to come to me, will you not?"

"Of course, my lord," Harry said with a bow of his head, burying his horror at such praise beneath his Occlumency shields.

"Good. Now, I have a mission for you, Harry. Your most important one. You have a year to complete it."

Harry looked up, curious despite himself. Up until now, all his missions had been quick and technically simple even if they were emotionally difficult. What could he be asked to do that might take a year?

"I want you to kill Albus Dumbledore."

 _Well now,_ the voice murmured. _I didn't see that one coming. Still, should be easy enough. Not like we like the old bastard that much._

"I want it to be public."

"P-public?"

Voldemort reached for him and Harry fought not to flinch away as Voldemort pushed his mask up.

"When you kill him, I want people to see you do it. Let the world know their leader is dead and the boy they put so much faith in works for me."

"In a year?"

"Before the end of the last school term." Voldemort gave one of his terrifying, teeth-baring smiles. "This is my grace to you, Harry. Do this, and I will ask nothing more of you in the last year of your life. Perhaps you can use it to find a way to avoid the hellhounds that are coming for you. As long as you don't stand against me, I will release you from active service to me."

It sounded like an offer far too good to be true. He didn't know how Voldemort would react if he mentioned that, though, so he just nodded.

"Thank you, my lord."

"You're dismissed."

Harry bowed and left. He teleported to Spinner's End, vanished his mask, and went up to the lab, where Snape was working on a potion. Neither of them spoke for a while, Snape focused on his brewing and Harry just watching, taking a seat on one of his stools. When Snape reached a part of the brewing where he only had to stir, he looked over.

"You looked troubled."

"The Dark Lord…"

"What did he do?"

"I don't think I should tell you while you're working."

Snape raised an eyebrow, but didn't push for details. As he worked, a thought occurred to Harry. When he left for school tomorrow, he wouldn't be able to come back so often. He could sneak out the school, but it would be awkward and with his school work to deal with he didn't want to spend half his nights staying up. But if he couldn't visit regularly, he wouldn't know if Snape needed anything. Snape had the Polyjuice now, but they might still need to communicate.

Fortunately, he had an idea and hopped off the stool, telling Snape he'd be back in a bit. Snape frowned at him but Harry was already moving. He recalled seeing a Post Office when he raised Snape from his coffin earlier in the summer and he went there now. It was shut, of course, but he broke in and only felt a little guilty about stealing two cheap notebooks. He returned to Snape's house, where Snape gave him a curious look as Harry set the two notebooks down on the workbench. He made a Wish, conjured a pen, then opened the notebooks and, in one, wrote:

 _My name is Harry Evans._

As soon as he wrote the words, they appeared in the second notebook, duplicated exactly, right down to the flick he put in the dot over the i. Satisfied, he left them and waited until Snape finished his potion, covered the cauldron, and washed his hands. Harry stayed where he was and Snape pulled out another stool, sitting facing him.

"Do you want to explain this?" he said, gesturing to the notebooks. Harry pushed one towards him.

"They're for if we need to contact each other while I'm at school. I won't be able to come regularly or I'll never sleep, but if you need something then you can use this."

Snape flipped through it, but his mouth twisted with a frown. "I won't pull you away from Hogwarts."

Harry shrugged. "It's there in case of emergency."

"Hmm. Tell me what the Dark Lord wanted."

"He wants me to kill Dumbledore," Harry said, and explained the details of the mission whilst Snape looked stunned. "Do you think he means it?"

"Letting you stop working for him? I highly doubt it. He can't remove the mark, so you'll always be his." He paused, looking troubled, then admitted, "I suspect he plans to kill you."

"But he knows I'm going to die anyway."

Snape grimaced at that. "Regardless. You're a danger to him if you choose to stand against him. It would be foolish of him to give you even a modicum of freedom."

"So what do I do? Killing Dumbledore…"

"It's a big thing," Snape agreed. "It'll have huge ramifications for the war, especially if you reveal yourself a Death Eater. It would break the light side's moral. It might even end the war entirely; I don't know how well the Ministry would stand up against the Dark Lord without Dumbledore as a rallying point."

"What about my lessons?"

"Lessons?"

"The ones Dumbledore wants to give me. He hasn't come by and mentioned them again, but I never told him no. Maybe… if I took them and found out how to defeat the Dark Lord, I could kill him instead. I wouldn't have to kill Dumbledore."

"It would certainly be ideal," Snape mused. "Your Occlumency is good enough now that I'm not worried the Dark Lord would find out. But if the time came and killing him wasn't possible—if whatever Dumbledore plans to teach you isn't enough—could you kill Dumbledore?"

"I'd have to, wouldn't I?"

"But _could_ you?" Snape repeated. "This isn't strangers or even vague acquaintances. You know Dumbledore. Could you kill him? Especially with an audience."

Harry stared down at his knees, imagining it. Imagined standing in the Great Hall at dinner, announcing himself a Death Eater, and Wishing Dumbledore dead. He'd escape in the ensuing pandemonium, while they were still figuring out what had happened.

Or perhaps not at dinner, he suddenly thought, imagining the looks on his friends' faces. Maybe he'd barge into a staff meeting and do it then. But McGonagall and Sirius and James would be there. He found himself oddly more worried about McGonagall's opinion of him than his godfather's.

So then where? The Ministry? Dumbledore visited there, or so Harry assumed given that he was Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. There was no one in the Ministry whose opinion bothered Harry. It might be a little harder to escape, but he could manage it.

"I could do it," he said quietly. "If it was him or my friends, I could do it."

"You're certain?"

Harry nodded, smiling wryly. "Honestly, the hardest part is knowing my friends would hate me for what I'd done. But actually killing him?" He shrugged. "I think it'd be easier than I should be comfortable with."

* * *

The next morning, Harry, Sirius, and James were early to King's Cross. Sirius and James would be taking the train up to Hogwarts with him—or rather, they would be on it, but Harry had been very clear that there weren't to sit with him.

"I'm sixteen," Harry told Sirius before they left the house, "and having my godfather ride the train with me is just embarrassing."

Sirius looked at him pitifully. "You wound me."

Harry just glowered at him. Sirius' affected look faded to one of genuine irritation, but James spoke before they could ended up in an argument.

"We'll be patrolling the train," James said, grabbing the trunk he and Sirius were using. Apparently they weren't taking enough to bother with one each. "I'll try and keep him from embarrassing you."

Platform nine and three-quarters was mostly empty when they arrived, all except the train staff and a few Aurors. There was a lot of concern over the safety of the students this year, a fear that Voldemort and the Death Eaters would attack the school. Harry had to choke down a hysterical giggle at the idea; they had no idea he was the only Death Eater entering the school, and that he was the biggest threat Dumbledore faced.

Harry settled into a compartment and consented to let Sirius and James stick with him until other students started arriving. Sirius grumbled a little about cruelty to dogfathers, but his expression was serious by the time he stepped onto the platform and helped the Aurors keep watch over the growing crowd of students and parents.

Harry stayed where he was, unwilling to face the crowd. He sat low on his seat, trying to stay out of view, with Nyneve's journal propped open, a Latin dictionary at his side, and in his lap the notebook he'd bought specifically for his translation. It was a slow process; the Old English gave him as much trouble as the Latin did, but he persevered despite the tedious paragraphs of daily life and the descriptors of her menses and what she did with it. The history he could discover was worth it.

He kept half his attention on the door of the compartment, aware of people pausing occasionally to stare in at him, but he only looked up when the door opened and Cid and Tyler entered. He closed his notebook, eying them warily as they sat down opposite him.

"I take it back," Cid said.

"Take what back?" Harry asked.

"That I'm happy you got moved up a year."

"Why's that?"

"Because it means you're not the new prefect. Guess who is."

"Orion," Harry said, and Cid nodded miserably.

"I saw him on the platform, strutting about like he owned the place. As if my life is not bad enough right now."

Harry looked down, unable to meet their eyes.

"That wasn't aimed at you," Cid grumbled. "Look, I'm sorry about all that shit I said before. I was angry and afraid. I'm still afraid, but I'm not so angry anymore. I don't blame you."

Harry glanced up. Cid seemed to mean it and he'd never been any good at hiding his emotions.

"Thanks," Harry said quietly but earnestly. He glanced at Tyler, who was slumped against the window, staring miserably out at the busy platform. He gave no sign of wanting to talk.

"You hear about Alex Stone?" Cid said quietly to Harry, and Tyler's face got even more miserable.

"Yeah," Harry said, trying not to remember the sound of screams and unable to suppress a wave of guilt. "I'm sorry."

Tyler didn't acknowledge his sympathies, just rubbed at his neck, drawing Harry's attention to it.

"Er… is that a bite mark?"

Tyler jerked his hand down. "I had a run-in with a vampire," he muttered, and Harry's eyes widened.

"Seriously?"

 _Hey, I wonder if becoming a vampire would save you from the hellhounds,_ the voice wondered suddenly. Harry ignored it.

"That's Tyler," Cid said with mock exasperation. "Irresistible to the ladies, even dead ones that used to be engaged to his dad."

Tyler punched Cid's shoulder while Harry looked on in bafflement. With a sigh, Tyler gave Harry a brief run-down of his newly discovered family history. It made Harry start to wonder about his own family history—he realised he knew nothing of Snape's family—but the compartment door slid open again and Draco entered, derailing his train of thoughts. Harry instantly relaxed, looking up at him with a smile. Draco came over but didn't sit down, just ran his fingers through Harry's hair. Harry leant into him.

"You alright?" Draco asked quietly, and Harry hummed an agreement.

"Why are we getting dirty looks?" Cid demanded, folding his arms over his chest and glaring up at Draco.

"I don't want you upsetting him. If you're still bitter about what happened, you can get out right now."

"Draco—" Harry objected, but Tyler cut him off.

"You've got no right to say anything, Draco. You're not the one who was cursed. We've every right to hold a grudge if we want."

"It doesn't mean I'm going to let you harass him about it," Draco snapped. "He's been through enough without you two—"

" _He's_ been through enough?" Tyler snarled, leaping to his feet. "I was kidnapped and cursed so I could die at any second. I was tortured for no other reason than that bitch Lestrange's amusement. My two oldest friends were tortured to death and all my neighbours were murdered just because they're my neighbours. My birth father is a coward married to a racist bitch, and to top it all off I was nearly killed by a goddamned vampire."

Harry stared at his lap, feeling like he might be sick. Draco's presence was no comfort at all now.

"I'm sure Harry went through some shit when he was taken," Tyler went on, "and I don't actually blame him for what happened despite what you seem to think, Draco, but that doesn't mean the rest of us have nothing to complain about."

He stood there glaring at Draco, one hand tightly clenched and the other over the pocket with his wand, like he was ready to draw at any moment. Harry felt Draco's hand tighten slightly in his hair and glanced up to gauge his expression, then stood.

"Draco, leave it," he said quietly. "Tyler's right, and they're not harassing me."

Draco held Tyler's glare for a moment longer, then turned to look at Harry. "You sure?"

"Yes, and I can look after myself, you know, even if they were."

Still frowning slightly, Draco nodded. "We're setting off soon. I have to go to the prefect's carriage, but I thought you should join me and the other sixth years after. You should meet them properly now you're joining us."

"Maybe," Harry said. His guilt made spending the entire trip with Tyler and Cid a daunting prospect, but meeting the sixth years meant meeting Theo Nott. It might not be a problem, Theo might not look like his father, but the fear of it was enough to make Harry consider putting up with his guilt-induced nausea instead.

Draco nodded, kissed him, and left. Harry sat down, the train set off, and Harry fell into conversation with Cid and Tyler. They caught up on each others holidays and Cid and Tyler asked about his work with Nyneve's journal. They soon regretted asking about that as he had what they affectionally termed a 'nerd moment'.

James stuck his head in when he passed the compartment, briefly asking after them before resuming his patrols. When he'd gone and Harry explained what he was doing there, Cid asked, "Are you going to tell people he's not your dad?"

Harry blinked, startled, then frowned thoughtfully. He'd forgotten that almost everyone believed James was his father. They might find it weird when Harry didn't call him that over the next year, and it could get awkward for him to pretend. He wasn't sure he wanted to, but did he want people to know he was Snape's bastard?

He thought about it for a while, and decided that he didn't mind it that much. Despite spending a significant portion of his life hiding who he was, he found he didn't want to spend the next year lying about who his father was.

Aware that it would affect more than just him, he excused himself from the carriage and went to find James. He found Sirius first and told him about it. Sirius didn't look happy about it.

"Don't know why you'd want to acknowledge that git as your father," he muttered, keeping his voice down in the busy corridor.

"He died for me," Harry said, and Sirius scowled deeper but didn't argue. "I don't want to lie about it, and it's not your decision anyway."

"Fine," Sirius bit out. "But you should talk to James first. It affects him, too."

He stalked away before Harry could reply.

He found James a few carriages down; in just that time he was stopped by people asking why his 'dad' and godfather were on the train, and it only cemented his decision even more.

James was a lot more relaxed about the idea, saying only, "If that's what you want, I don't mind."

Harry still didn't correct anyone just yet. He went to the nearest toilet and Wished for the notebook he'd stolen last night, and a pen, and flipped the lid down on the toilet before sitting on it, opening the notebook and writing in it.

 _Do you mind if I tell everyone you're my dad?_

He wasn't even sure if Snape would notice it. Harry hadn't put any kind of alert system on the notebooks; he could only rely on Snape to actually look at the notebook. He would give it a minute or two and if there was no response then he'd teleport away. He'd never done it from a moving vehicle; he wasn't sure if he'd splinch himself doing it.

He didn't have to find out. Just as someone knocked on the toilet door, new words appeared in the notebook.

 **Who's everyone?**

"Hurry it up in there!" a voice called through the door.

"Just a minute," Harry replied, and hurriedly wrote back.

 _The students. But they'll tell their parents and the DP will prob find out._

 **Why do you want to tell them?**

 _I don't want to lie about James._

"What the hell are you doing in there? Come on!"

 _Have to go. Mind if I tell?_

 **If you must.**

Harry could imagine Snape's irritated tone of voice as he said it, but it was enough. He Wished the notebook and pen away, stood, flushed the toilet, ran the tap, and then unlocked the door. He didn't get chance to even step forward before he was grabbed by the lapels and wrenched out. He stumbled into the corridor and the toilet door slammed shut behind him. He rolled his eyes and walked away.

The first person he told the truth to was Jia, who was a new Slytherin prefect alongside Orion. Two carriages later, everyone seemed to know. He was stopped several times to ask if it was true, and got reactions ranging from shock to near horror. He refused to answer any questions of 'How?' with anything more than a simple, "An affair." He didn't appreciate some of the judgemental looks he got for even that much.

A younger girl approached him at one point and thrust a small scroll tied with violet ribbon into his hands. He unrolled it to find an invitation from the new Professor Slughorn to join him for lunch in a compartment. Uninterested, and having already grabbed a snack from the trolley witch, he vanished it and carried on in search of Draco, taking care to Wish himself unnoticed as he passed the compartment where Slughorn was entertaining. When he glanced through with his eye, he saw Ginny in there, looking unhappy to be squashed between Slughorn and the wall.

He'd just stepped into the next carriage when a compartment opened ahead of him and a tall, thin boy stepped out. Harry stopped short, recognising him as Theo Nott. His heart picked up a pace, but Theo looked nothing like his father and Harry felt a rush of relief that he wouldn't have to see that face around Hogwarts.

But then Theo asked, "Did you see the trolley on your way down here, Evans?" and in an instant, Harry was back at the hospital, pinned to the floor terrified and helpless, unable to do more than squirm uselessly while that voice laughed in his ear.

The windows blew out.

A hand touched his arm. He wrenched away from it, stumbling around and blinking as the train carriage came back to focus around him. He found Ginny staring at him with concern and a little bit of fear, one hand cradled to her chest. The wind was whipping their robes and hair about their faces and people were screaming and yelling with fear. Glass littered the floor, but most of the windows seemed to have blown out instead of in and only Theo had been injured.

"What the hell?" he muttered, pulling at a piece of glass stuck in his cheek.

That voice…

Harry shuddered, spun, and burst into the previous carriage. There was an empty compartment just inside and he fell into it, dropped to his knees, and threw up. He knelt there sobbing and shaking, using every inch of his self-control to keep his magic from lashing out further. He could hear voices in the corridor beyond and at one point he was sure someone spoke directly to him, but all he could focus on was himself, on straining his Occlumency to keep the memories from overwhelming him and his magic from destroying the whole train.

When he calmed down enough, he sat back and wiped his face. The vomit was gone, though he didn't remember vanishing it, and he used a freshening charm on his mouth.

"Alright?" asked Draco's voice from behind him.

Harry nodded and got up a little shakily, turning to face him. Draco stood in front of the repaired door, and Sirius was on the other side, his back to it, looking like a guard dog. The train windows beyond looked to have been repaired.

"Did I hurt anyone?"

"Nothing serious. Weasley tried to touch you and burnt her hand, and a few others were cut by the glass, but it was nothing we couldn't fix up." He twisted his head slightly to nod towards Sirius. "I had to keep him from touching you. He said he's never seen you have a panic attack before."

"I didn't want to bother him so I hid them from him."

"He's worried about you."

Harry sighed and sat. "Let him in."

Draco slid the door open and Sirius instantly turned and pushed his way in. Harry forced a smile for him, but Sirius wasn't fooled.

"What the hell was that? Malfoy said you were having a panic attack."

"I was."

"He seemed to think it wasn't the first."

"It wasn't."

Sirius waited. When Harry said nothing more, he sighed irritably.

"Harry, I'm your godfather. You didn't think I needed to know that you're having panic attacks? How long has this been going on? Why the hell didn't I know?"

"Since June. I didn't tell you because you had enough to deal with without me adding to it."

Sirius muttered a curse and dropped heavily into the seat beside him. He grabbed Harry's shoulders, ignored Harry's flinch, and turned him to face him.

"I am your godfather. I'm here to look after you, you moron. I can't look after you if I don't know what's wrong with you."

"You weren't exactly easy to approach this summer," he muttered, and when Sirius grimaced he added, "I didn't mean that. Remus died and you were dealing with that, and then that stuff with James… you had enough to manage, Sirius. I can handle myself."

Sirius hands tightened briefly around his shoulder. "You shouldn't have to," he said, and pulled Harry into a hug. "I know things haven't been great between us lately, but if I promise to do better do you promise to talk to me so I can help you?"

Harry nodded, but knew it was a lie. What could he talk to Sirius about these days? School, perhaps, once that really got started, but other than that… Draco and Snape were his confidantes, the ones he sought for comfort and support. Sirius simply couldn't give him what they did.

Sirius drew back and patted Harry once more on the shoulder. "You should probably speak to Ginny Weasley. She was a bit upset about you burning her hand."

Harry nodded. Sirius gave him a smile that Harry did his best to return, then he left. Draco immediately took his vacated seat and Harry leant into him with a sigh, closing his eyes as Draco's arm came around him.

"What set you off?" Draco asked quietly. "I know your panic attacks are random sometimes, but you broke the windows. You don't break things with panic attacks."

"I don't want to talk about it."

"Harry…"

"Please, Draco." He wrapped both hands around Draco's waist and buried his face in his shoulder. "Another time maybe, if I'm ready. But not now."

"Alright," Draco said, and kissed his hair. Harry hugged him tighter, breathing him in and trying not to think about the time that he would have to face, and hear, Theo again.


	38. Chapter 38

**Chapter 38**

Harry stayed with Draco until they were almost at Hogsmeade, when he reluctantly left him to go back to Cid and Tyler's compartment so he could change into his school robes. He stopped briefly by a compartment with Ginny in so he could apologise about burning her hand. She accepted it, but she seemed a little more wary of him than before.

At Hogsmeade, when they went to the carriages that took them up to the school, Cid stopped short, staring at the Thestrals. "Fuck, those things are _cool!_ "

"If cool means creepy," Tyler said, while Harry looked away, only to notice Hermione a little further up, also staring at a Thestral that she could only see because of him.

Once they arrived, getting into school took a little longer than usual because they all had to get checked over by Filch with a Secrecy Sensor. Harry stood through it tensely, afraid as it passed over his left arm even though he knew his magic would hide the Dark Mark from detection.

At the feast, Dumbledore introduced Sirius, James, and Slughorn as the new teachers, and announced Professor Sinistra was taking over as Head of Slytherin. After, he mentioned that new protections had been placed on the school, warned them against breaking the rules, especially their curfew, and asked they be extra careful and vigilant in these dangerous times.

Harry was eager to get to bed that evening, but when he reached the Slytherin common room, Theo Nott was ahead of him and headed straight for the sixth years' dorm. Harry hung back in the common room, convincing Draco to sit with him in one of the darker corners for a while. Draco's brow furrowed slightly, but he complied and they settled on one of the sofas, Draco sitting and Harry laying across it, head in Draco's lap.

For a while they just sat in silence, Draco combing his fingers through Harry's hair, until the common room started to empty and Draco asked, "What are you watching?"

Harry didn't deny it. Draco must have seen his magical eye moving to keep an eye on Theo. Theo had showered briefly, which Harry hadn't watched, then changed for bed, brushed his teeth, and returned to the dorm.

"Theodore Nott."

"Should I be jealous?" Draco asked.

Theo was in bed by now, curtains drawn around him even if he wasn't yet sleeping, so Harry finally turned both eyes up to Draco's face.

"No. I love you, I would never…"

"I know," Draco said softly. "I'm kidding."

"His dad," Harry said, and then stopped.

"What about him?"

Harry didn't answer. He turned onto his side, putting his face away from Draco. The hands in his hair stopped moving.

"His dad's a Death Eater," Draco said, his voice suddenly tinged with anger. "Was he… did he…"

Harry didn't know if Draco was asking if Frederick Nott was the one that raped him, or just if he'd tortured him, but he nodded.

"Bastard," Draco spat with a vehemence Harry had never heard from him before. "That fucking complete absolute shit head bastard."

Harry rolled back, looking up at him, impressed. "That was almost as good as Cid."

Draco glanced down, unamused. "Harry—"

He reached up, placed a hand on Draco's cheek. "It's done," he said quietly. "I'm not allowed to take revenge for what was done to me, you know that. I'm dealing with it, slowly, but I… I just need you to be here for me, but not angry. I appreciate you standing up for me, but your anger doesn't help me."

Draco nodded, a little stiffly. Harry guessed he'd need a little time to handle it. He dropped his hand and sat up, turning to kiss Draco. When the other boy had relaxed, he broke the kiss and pressed their foreheads together, closing his eyes.

"I love you," he whispered, and felt his heart ease a little when Draco said it back.

* * *

After breakfast the next morning, Harry and the other sixth years remained seated as they waited for Professor Sinistra to finish handing out timetables to the rest of the students. She came to them last, checking all their OWL results to ensure they achieved the required grade to take their chosen subjects.

"I see you've been recommended for advanced classes in Ancient Runes and History of Magic," she said when she got to Harry. "Will you be taking them?"

"Does that mean extra classes? I never had a career meeting last year so I don't know anything about them."

"It means you'll be taking seventh year classes at the same time," she explained. "You'll be expected to keep up with both and sit the NEWT at the end of this year, but if it proves too much then you're allowed to drop the advanced classes at any time. You're going to have a busy schedule this year if you do take them; are you sure you want to take all these classes?"

He nodded. Although he dropped Herbology, Astronomy, and Arithmancy, the advanced classes filled up most of the free periods they created.

"Alright. There you go." She tapped her wand to a blank schedule and it filled up with his classes. He had Ancient Runes first and waited for Draco to get his schedule then they headed off together.

"You really are busy this year," Draco remarked, looking over Harry's timetable.

"I want to be. Besides it's not like you can talk. You're taking a ton of classes."

"Everything I need for Healing."

Harry looked at him, surprised. "Healing?"

"Didn't I tell you? I want to be a healer."

"No, you never mentioned. I think that's nice. But I wouldn't have thought you need Ancient Runes for Healing."

"Everything I need for Healing, plus Ancient Runes because it's fun," Draco admitted with a smile.

Their classes were all shared that year. As well as him and Draco in Ancient Runes, there were Hermione and three Ravenclaws: Terry Boot, Mandy Brocklehurst, and Su Li. Harry found the class noticeably harder than the last time he was in a classroom, but he didn't struggle. Professor Babbling set them a monster-load of homework though.

They had Defence Against the Dark Arts next. Harry compared schedules with Hermione as they headed over; she was taking Herbology and Advanced Arithmancy so hers was almost as busy as his.

"Do you think it'll be weird having your godfather teach Defence?" she asked him as they reached the classroom. Harry just shrugged.

James was sat behind the desk, with Sirius perched on it, watching them all file in and take their seats. Harry sat with Draco, with Hermione and Neville in front of them and a couple of Hufflepuff girls behind them. Sirius smiled at him and Harry returned it with a small one of his own.

James took the register when they were all sat down, while Sirius made a seating chart and asked them all to keep to the same seats until they'd memorised faces and names.

"Alright," Sirius said after, "first things first—it's Sirius and James. We're pretty lax when it comes to the rules and Professor Potter and Professor Black is way too pompous and authoritative."

"At least you don't have to worry about slipping up with that then," Draco muttered to Harry.

"On that note," James said, leaning forward to rest his arms on the desk, "anyone who makes Sirius-serious jokes gets jinxed. I don't care how smart you think you are, I shared a dorm with this idiot for seven years and I promise you I've heard them all before."

There were a few laughs at that and Sirius affected an offended expression, but it soon passed. "Okay, one other thing before we get started: we're kind of famous. Not our fault. I've got a pretty face and it gets noticed; Merlin only knows why James does."

"Shut up, Padfoot. Most of you have probably read about us in the _Prophet_ and you're all curious, so this lesson, and this lesson only, you're free to ask whatever questions you've got."

Immediately several hands flew into the air. James pointed at a Lavender Brown.

"Is it true Evans isn't your son?"

Harry wasn't really surprised that was the first question. James glanced at him and Harry nodded.

"Yes," James said. "It's true."

"Your wife really had an affair with _Snape_?" blurted Seamus Finnigan.

"Must have been blind," muttered Hannah Abbott. Harry whirled on her.

"Shut up," he snarled, and everyone in the classroom looked at him.

"Harry," Sirius said, and he reluctantly turned back to face him. "Let's not scare your classmates, yeah?"

"As long as they don't talk shi- rubbish about my parents," he said stiffly.

"Why aren't you called Snape then?" Finnigan asked.

Before Harry could answer, Ron Weasley said, "Bastards don't bear their father's names."

"Oi!" Sirius said while Harry turned on him with a glare. "None of that, thank you."

"He's not wrong," drawled Blaise Zabini.

"You would know," said Lisa Turpin. Blaise looked supremely unconcerned at her snide tone.

"Settle down, please," James said loudly. "Harry's name is his choice, and we said you could question Sirius and me, not him. If no one has anything else to ask—"

Instantly several hands rose. James nodded at Parvati.

"How come you're both teaching?"

Harry watched them, wondering what reason they'd give. They hadn't said anything to him about how they planned to handle the inevitable queries and attention they'd get.

"I don't do so well on my own," James answered simply, only the slight hunching of his shoulders indicating any discomfort. "Dumbledore offered Sirius the job; I came along with him."

"Is that because of what Lucius Malfoy did?" Ron asked, and the tension in the room increased tenfold. Next to Harry, Draco sunk in his seat a little.

"Yes," James said, glancing briefly at Draco.

"Doesn't it bother you that you have to teach his son?" Parvati asked.

"No. Draco had nothing to do with what Lucius did."

"You believe that?" Ron said sceptically. "Everyone knows he's basically a junior Death Eater just like his dad."

"Draco's nothing like Lucius," Harry snapped. "Keep your stupid mouth shut, Weasley."

"Alright, let's calm it down," Sirius said with a warning glance at Harry. "No one in this classroom—no one in this school—is a Death Eater and I don't want to hear any accusations to the contrary."

 _He has no idea how wrong he is,_ murmured the voice, and Harry resisted the urge to rub at his arm.

"What exactly did Lucius Malfoy do to you?" asked Ernie MacMillan. "Surely he didn't just lock you up for fourteen years."

"I've no interest in discussing that. Suffice to say it wasn't pleasant."

"What about this summer? You were kidnapped with Evans, weren't you? Was that Malfoy?"

"I don't know what happened. My memories of that time were wiped."

"Were yours?" Ernie asked Harry.

"I'm not talking about it," Harry said without looking around. In front of him, Neville's shoulders hunched and Hermione folded her arms on the table, plucking at the sleeves of her robes.

"That's a no, then? What—"

"I said I'm not talking about it, Macmillan."

"Professor Bl- uh, I mean, Sirius," Mandy Brocklehurst said, "what was it like in Azkaban?"

"In a word? Horrible. I don't know how close any of you got to the Dementors guarding the school after I broke out, but they suck the happiness out of you. In Azkaban, it's constant. Every moment you're miserable, forced to relive the worst memories of your life."

"How did you break out?"

"I'm not allowed to answer that; the Ministry doesn't want me giving people ideas. Any more before we get started? No? Alright, so you've had, what? Six teachers in this subject?"

"Only five," Ernie said. "Quirrell, Lockhart, Lupin, Moody, and Umbridge."

"Yes, but for a few months Moody wasn't actually Moody, it was Barty Crouch the younger, so six really. I hear he was about what you'd expect from a half-made Death Eater pretending to be a half-mad Auror, but I'm sure the real thing was better. I know Umbridge and Lockhart were crap; I don't know much about Quirrell aside from being stupid enough to let Voldemort into his head; and I'm sure Remus—Lupin—was great, but it does mean—"

"Lupin was a _werewolf_ ," Theo interrupted, and Harry couldn't suppress a shudder.

"He was also my lover," Sirius said in a dangerous voice and Theo shut up.

Behind Harry, Hannah sighed.

"The handsome ones are always gay."

* * *

"Well that wasn't awkward at all," Draco remarked later after a lesson of practising to silently cast Shield Charms.

"It probably won't happen again," Harry replied. "It's just because it was the first class."

"You're painfully optimistic, Harry. You didn't have to stick up for me against Weasley, by the way."

Harry scowled, digging his toe into the dirt of the courtyard they stood in for morning break. "I don't like people saying that. I know he's your father and you probably… but you're not like him. You wouldn't do the things he's done."

"I don't know half the things he's done."

"You don't want to," Harry muttered. "I should go. I've got Advanced History next. What are you going to do?"

"Spend my free period working on that mountain of homework Babbling gave us."

There were only two other people in the seventh year History of Magic class—Logan Sparrow, the new head boy, and Katie Bell, the Gryffindor Quidditch Captain. Binns showed no surprise at having an extra student in his class; in fact, Harry wasn't sure he even noticed. He never took the register and Harry had never heard him get a student's name right. He was also still as boring as ever; apparently he didn't consider NEWT level classes worth a change in teaching style.

He got his first free period right before lunch, but it was spent working on the Defence homework Sirius set, which, for someone who claimed to disapprove of excessive studying, was a lot, and then he had double Potions for the last class of the day. There were eleven students in the class—him, Draco, Theo, Pansy, and Blaise from Slytherin; Hermione the only Gryffindor and Ernie Macmillan the only Hufflepuff; and Terry Boot, Mandy Brocklehurst, Su Li, and Padma Patil from Ravenclaw.

Harry sat between Draco and Hermione, who seemed to decide that sharing a workbench with Draco was worth sitting with Harry. Each workbench seated four students and Ernie, after a few moment's indecision, apparently decided his long running animosity with Harry was worth putting aside to sit with them when his other options were sitting alone or joining Pansy, Theo, and Blaise.

Slughorn already had three cauldrons set up and he asked them about each, looking amused but impressed at Hermione's eagerness to answer each question. Draco looked annoyed, especially when Hermione earnt twenty house points for Gryffindor.

"If you'd put your hand up you could have got us some points," Harry muttered to him. "He's not Snape; you don't get any favouritism anymore."

"How would you know if Snape showed me favouritism?"

"Hermione and Neville complained about it enough."

"Do you have something to share with the class, boys?" Slughorn said loudly, a disapproving frown on his face as he looked between them.

"No, sir. Sorry," Harry apologised.

"Yes, well, keep your conversations outside the classroom, thank you. As I was saying, Amortentia doesn't create true love, of course…"

Harry glanced at the cauldron nearest them, which was full of a potion giving off little spirals of steam and a thoroughly relaxing and almost seductive smell that reminded Harry of books, the Lake District, and freshly laundered clothes. Even the voice thought it smelt good, making a satisfied little noise when Harry inhaled

Slughorn set them to brewing the Draught of Living Death with the promised reward of a vial of Felix Felicis—liquid luck—to whomever brewed it best. Harry had no expectations of winning, but he didn't expect it to be because he had a seizure halfway through class that managed to not only knock his head, but also make him drop the mortar of powdered asphodel into his cauldron. It promptly melted and the ruined concoction proceeded to blend with the rest of the ingredients laid out in his workspace, and destroyed his book and part of the desk before Hermione vanished it.

"I hope you realise you lost me that Felix Felicis," Draco told Harry as he walked him up to the Hospital Wing.

"Poor you," Harry muttered. His head was pounding and sticky with blood and he couldn't quite manage to care about the damage he wrought.

"Yes, poor me. Granger's going to get it now, or possibly one of the Ravenclaws, which wouldn't be quite so terrible, but I deserved it."

Pomfrey fixed his head up easily and let him stay the rest of the afternoon to rest up. He slept through dinner and woke to find James sat by his bed, flipping through a _Witch Weekly_ magazine.

"Need tips on your autumn wardrobe?" Harry asked, which were the only words he could make out on the front of the magazine.

"It's all I could find," James said, closing it and tossing it onto the end of the bed.

"Why are you here? Where's Sirius?"

"The Great Hall, then he'll be in our office. I'd had enough of people for one day, I thought you might like a friendly face to wake up to."

"Are you okay being this far away from him?"

James smiled and shrugged. "It's not so bad after being together all day. I have to start getting used to the distance anyway. How are you doing? How's your head?"

"Fine. I'm hungry though."

"Dumbledore wants to see you this evening, so you can come up to my and Sirius' rooms, eat there and then floo through."

"Works for me. Where are your rooms?"

"Fourth floor."

Madam Pomfrey came to give him a last check and then he went with James up to the fourth floor. The rooms he shared with Sirius weren't as big as the ones Snape used to have, although it was made up the same with a sitting room as entry point —at the moment sparsely decorated with only a couch before the fireplace and a couple of empty bookshelves— and a bathroom and bedroom coming off it.

"Only one bedroom?" Harry asked, settling on the couch while James lit the fire. They had a couple of windows, but they faced north so the room was already fairly dark despite the sun still being up.

"We've got twin beds," James explained, coming to join him. "But Padfoot usually sleeps at the foot of mine."

James hadn't eaten either so they called for a house elf to bring them a tray each and sat opposite each other, talking about their first days. The rest of James' classes went much the same way as the first one, though lacking the tension caused by having Draco or Harry in the room. Harry had to put up with questions all day about his parentage and kidnapping, but after snapping and glaring a few times people quickly stopped and settled for believing the rumours.

Sirius turned up just as they finished eating.

"Why did I ever agree to take this job?" he asked with a sigh, flopping onto the sofa beside James, toeing off his shoes and turning to rest against the arm and put his feet in James' lap. James shoved them off, wrinkling his nose.

"Your feet stink."

"What wrong with the job?" Harry asked.

"I've just had a fifth year in my office—which is cool, by the way; I like having an office—getting in a state over her OWLs already. I am not equipped to deal with hysterical fifteen year old girls." He wriggled to get comfortable against the cushions and looked at Harry. "Doing alright, kid?"

Harry nodded and repeated most of what he'd already told James. He sat talking with them for the next couple of hours. It was the first time they'd really talked in months, and the most they'd talked without getting into an argument, and it was nice, even if Harry was still aware that Sirius was not as close to him as Sirius probably wanted to be.

At eight o'clock, Harry took some floo powder and stepped through the fireplace into Dumbledore's office. He dusted himself off, took the proffered seat, and refused the offer of fudge flies. Harry watched Dumbledore put the tin of sweets away, trying to figure out if he could still kill him now that he was actually face to face with the man.

 _It's him or your friends,_ the voice said, and Harry knew that he could do it, if he had to. _So let's find out if we have to._

"Is this about the lessons you wanted to give me?" Harry asked as Dumbledore settled into his chair.

"It is. Are you willing to take them?"

Harry nodded.

"Even though it puts your godfather, James, and several of your friends at risk?"

"As long as he doesn't find out…"

He didn't need to specify who 'he' was.

"I will do everything in my power to ensure he doesn't," Dumbledore promised gravely. "I've no desire to see them dead anymore than you. It's why I had you floo from Sirius and James' rooms. No one will question you visiting them, even if your parentage is now common knowledge."

Harry could hear the implicit question in that. "I didn't want to lie about it."

"Quite understandable. It is absolutely within your right to reveal, and I am pleased that you're willing to finally acknowledge Severus as your father, though saddened that you couldn't do so before he died."

Harry stared at his knees and said nothing.

"I apologise," Dumbledore said, startling Harry into looking up. "I didn't mean to distress you."

"You didn't. It's been two months, I'm fine."

Dumbledore looked a little doubtful, but didn't push it. "As to the matter of secrecy, there is also the issue that Voldemort could read the thoughts from your mind. Severus assured me last year that you proved quite apt at Occlumency; are you still practising it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good." He paused, then said, "Would you mind if I tested your defences for myself?"

 _That bastard just wants to get inside your head,_ the voice said angrily, and Harry didn't think it was wrong, but he was confident enough in his Occlumency skills. He had to be. If he couldn't keep out Dumbledore then he couldn't keep out Voldemort and they were all doomed. He'd never been sure if Voldemort had ever actually been in his mind and it would be good to test himself against someone other than Snape.

"Alright."

Dumbledore didn't draw his wand to cast Legilimency, he just held Harry's gaze. Harry felt him pressing on his mind, a different sensation to when Snape did it. He couldn't put into words how, exactly, except maybe that it just felt older.

It was also easy enough to mislead. Dumbledore was as good as Snape at coming at Harry's memories sideways, trying to sneak his way around to the ones he wanted. Dumbledore used all the techniques Snape had shown Harry, and Harry defended himself just as he'd been taught, until eventually Dumbledore withdrew.

"You are as skilled as your father was," Dumbledore said. Harry felt unexpectedly touched by the compliment. "Very well then. I would like to begin on Saturday, if you would arrive at eight o'clock that evening."

"Yes, sir," Harry agreed, and was dismissed.

* * *

With his own copy of _Advanced Potion Making_ destroyed, Harry had to make do with a borrowed one from Slughorn until he could get a new one delivered. At first he was annoyed to find that the owner—a _Half-Blood Prince_ , the only name he could find—had left not a single page untouched with notes or corrections on the brewing instructions, but then he realised that the alterations actually led to better potions.

"This handwriting looks vaguely familiar," Draco remarked, looking through the book one evening in the common room. He wasn't impressed by Harry's sudden stardom in potions, though he was less annoyed than Hermione, who thought using the Prince's notes counted as cheating, though she at least didn't report him. "Hardly legible, mind you, but kind of familiar. Wonder what these spells do."

"I'll try them out when I've got time," Harry said, bent over his Ancient Runes homework. With all his classes and the homework they set, he'd barely had chance to do more than glance through the book and notice the spells the Prince scribbled in the margins. Not that he was complaining; he liked keeping busy. The more he could focus his mind on something other than his own thoughts, the better.

Even so, he was glad when Saturday came and he could take a break from schoolwork. He spent the morning watching the Slytherin Quidditch team tryouts; Draco was the new captain and they needed new Chasers and a Keeper. Cid was trying out again this year and Tyler sat with Harry in the stands to watch and cheer when Cid got the position of Keeper.

After, Draco flew over to Harry while the rest of the new team and disappointed hopefuls trudged off the pitch, and Harry climbed onto the broom in front of him so they could fly together for a while until lunch.

"That was unpleasantly tedious," Draco said as they drifted lazily over the pitch.

"Well at least it's over and your team seems alright."

"You'd have picked differently?"

"I think you should replace Crabbe and Goyle. I know they're big, but they're really not that good as Beaters."

"Then I would have spent longer in tryouts and upset my friends. They're decent enough."

"Don't say I didn't warn you when you get your arses kicked."

"As if," Draco scoffed. "The 'puffs have made no changes to their team this year and they're barely adequate. The Ravens might give us a bit of a hard time; they got a couple of new Chasers yesterday, but we can still beat them. Gryffindor… well, they haven't had tryouts yet but they lost two Chasers and the Weasley girl is only a semi-decent Seeker. McLaggen's not a bad Keeper but after last year I doubt Bell will keep him on the team."

"So his replacement could be amazing."

"Not amazing enough. We'll win the cup for sure," Draco said.

"If you say so," Harry said with a grin, and wiggled closer against him.

That evening, he walked up to Sirius and James' rooms (they'd added some books and knick-knacks to it now, as well as an Appleby Arrows flag, so it looked more lived in) and took the floo through to the headmaster's office.

There, Dumbledore brought out a Pensieve and took Harry into it to view the memory of a Ministry official called Bob Ogden as he visited a run-down shack of a house. It introduced them to a family called the Gaunts—a horrid man called Marvolo, his equally rotten grown-up son Morfin, and his timid and abused teenage daughter Merope. Ogden was there to arrest Morfin for cursing a Muggle, something Marvolo objected to with yells about how pure their blood was, waving a ring in Ogden's face. When that didn't get the desired reaction, he wrenched his daughter forwards to show off a necklace she wore—a necklace he claimed belonged to Salazar Slytherin, one which Harry recognised all too well because it was sitting in his vault at Gringotts.

 _Don't mention it. He doesn't need to know so don't you dare mention it._

Harry didn't, keeping his mouth shut as they watched the rest of the memory. There was little more to see: Ogden insisted Morfin appear before the Ministry for trial only to get interrupted by the passing presence of a Muggle outside. It was the same Muggle Morfin cursed and whom Merope apparently fancied, the revelation of which led to her father attempting to strangle her. When Ogden interfered to save her life, Morfin and Marvolo both turn on him and he elected to run rather than fight, and Harry and Dumbledore left the memory then.

"What happened next?" Harry asked once they were back in the office.

"Ogden returned with reinforcements and arrested both men. Merope was quite alright."

Harry nodded, sitting down opposite the desk. "Why'd you show me that memory, sir? I thought you wanted to teach me about the Dark Lord."

In the brief silence following his question, the voice said, _You might want to watch that. Only his followers call him that and you don't want to bring suspicion on us, do you?_

"I am teaching you about Voldemort," Dumbledore eventually said. "Do you not recognise the name Marvolo?"

"No. Should I?"

"It was Tom Riddle's middle name."

"Oh," Harry said, looking away and mumbling, "He didn't really tell me much about himself. Mostly I talked to him."

"Of course, I shouldn't have assumed. Then let me inform you: the people we just met were Tom's mother, grandfather, and uncle."

Harry looked back, wide-eyed. "That girl was his mum? But she…"

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. Harry waved his hands in a helpless gesture.

"I don't know. I just… I guess I thought he came from… more. I mean he's… he's _Voldemort_. It's hard to believe that his mother was… she could hardly even do magic, but she had a son that grew up so powerful."

"Merope was not quite so powerless as we saw once her father and brother were arrested. Morfin went to Azkaban for three years and Marvolo for six months, and in that time Merope was able to flourish by herself." He noticed Harry's doubtful looked and smiled. "She did not become any great witch as her son would, but she was by no means incompetent. She was skilful enough to enchant Tom's father, whom we also briefly met, into eloping with her."

Harry thought for a moment, then said, "The Muggle that passed the house?"

"Yes. Tom Riddle Senior."

"She enchanted him? With Imperius?" He thought of his first Potions lesson of the term. "Or a love potion?"

"I believe so."

Harry thought about that. "I'm guessing things weren't all happy families if Tom grew up to become Voldemort and hate Muggles enough to kill them."

"Unfortunately. As I'm sure you know, love potions do not create true love and their effects are not permanent. Be aware that at this point I am theorising, but a few months after their marriage, Tom Riddle reappeared in the village speaking of being 'hoodwinked' and 'taken in'. It is not far-fetched to assume he was enchanted, and that the enchantment had now stopped. Merope was, at this point, pregnant, and it is my belief that she either hoped he had fallen truly in love with her, or she was simply so besotted as to no longer wish to deceive him. Whatever the case, she was wrong and Tom Riddle abandoned her regardless, never seeking to discover what became of his unborn child."

"So Voldemort grew up to hate Muggles because his dad abandoned him?" Harry asked.

"No doubt that is part of it, but not the all. You see, Merope died very shortly after childbirth, leaving her son in the hands of a Muggle orphanage with nothing but a name."

" _Oh,_ " Harry said in sudden, abrupt understanding. Orphanages were terrible, horrible places, governed by harsh taskmasters that beat and abused their charges, while the older kids picked on the younger ones. Vernon had often threatened to send Harry to such a place, going on about how lucky Harry was to have family look after him, and the stories Harry read only confirmed it. It was no wonder Tom Riddle ended up hating Muggles if that was what he'd grown up with.

"I think that will do for tonight," Dumbledore said, and Harry nodded absently. He had plenty to think on.

 _That story is a little too familiar for your comfort,_ the voice remarked not much later as Harry headed back down to Slytherin. _Dead mother, father who's not interested, less than stellar childhood…_

'Did you know about the locket?' Harry asked, because there was no point arguing when it was true.

 _How could I possibly know about it? I'm just a voice inside your head._

'Then why did you tell me to keep it when they were going to throw it out?'

 _I simply thought we should. Does it matter? You realise you now own a priceless artefact? An object from one of the Hogwarts founders must be worth a fortune._

'What good is that to me? I can't do anything with my money.'

 _I really don't see what it matters. We've got the locket; it's just a fact. Forget about the bloody thing if it makes you feel better._

* * *

Afraid of it getting out, Harry hadn't mentioned his lessons with Dumbledore to anyone other than Snape, but as he sat in a corner of the common room with Draco later that evening, he Wished for no one to be able to hear them and told him about it all.

"What good is learning about the Dark Lord's history going to do you?" Draco asked, still looking worried even after Harry's assurances that this wouldn't get back to Voldemort and lead to the Word of Death Curses being activated.

"Know thine enemy. Dumbledore reckons we'll learn something about how to defeat him."

Draco's expression said he clearly doubted it, but asked, "So what did you learn?"

"The Dark Lord's a half-blood. His mother love potioned a Muggle and got pregnant, but then he abandoned her while she was pregnant and she died after having the baby and the Dark Lord grew up in a Muggle orphanage."

" _What?_ You're lying."

"I'm not."

"Dear Merlin. You should tell the rest of the Death Eaters; they'll abandon him in a heartbeat. I can't believe my father grovels to a _halfie_."

"I'm a halfie. Are you that disgusted about dating one?"

Draco scowled at him. "Of course not. But dating a half-blood is one thing; bending your knee to one is a different matter. It suggests he thinks they're better than him."

"So you think I'm lesser than you because I'm not pureblood."

"No."

"Sounds like it."

"I don't," Draco insisted. "How could I ever think you're lesser than me when you've got the power you do?"

Harry rested his head on Draco's shoulder, not wanting to argue about it further, and said, "They wouldn't believe me about him being a half-blood anyway, and even if they did, they wouldn't leave," he pointed out. "They'd be too scared. Besides, he'd want to know how I know and he'd probably kill me for telling everyone anyway."

"Fair point," Draco muttered, tightening his arms around him and burying his face in Harry's neck. "Keep it to yourself, then."

* * *

Once again Harry found himself the subject of much gossip that term. Despite some initial disbelief, he soon heard people wondering how they'd never realised before that he was Snape's son, and some people started proclaiming they knew it all along. He generally ignored it all, unless he heard nasty remarks about his mother, usually something about the sort of loose woman she must have been to sleep with Snape of all people. He was less defensive about Snape, but after a few cases of lime green skin and knees glued together, people quickly learned to keep their opinions on his parents to themselves.

On the second Saturday of term, Harry received an invitation from Slughorn to attend 'a little party' in his rooms for supper. He wasn't overly eager to go, but Hermione, Tyler, and Ginny were going, too, so hopefully it wouldn't be too bad. Draco sulked a little at not getting an invitation himself, but he soon cheered up after spending an afternoon in the Room of Requirement with Harry. Harry only went up there with him to just chill out somewhere nice, but Draco started kissing and touching him and Harry had no objections to taking things further.

It was the first time they'd done it since his birthday. His guilt over the Bennett and Stone deaths, and then his fear of becoming a monster after killing the abusive orphanage manager, had left him only wanting chaste comfort from Draco when he visited. Now, after two weeks of not feeling his arm burn once and the pleasure of being back at Hogwarts, he was willing to let things progress when Draco's kisses became more heated. Both of them were in robes that wouldn't undo only to the waist, but rather than transfigure them they stripped to their boxers. Harry felt terribly self-conscious at first, but Draco's kisses and reassuring words in the soft warmth of the firelight soon relaxed him.

It was a different sensation to have only the thin material of their boxers between them instead of two pairs of jeans. Harry had to stop after they first thrust their hips together, taking a moment to figure out if he could handle it.

 _Do it,_ the voice spoke up unexpectedly. _The last time made you feel better about what Nott did to us and I won't object to it if this whole business serves some actual purpose._

Harry didn't like how that made it sound like he was just using Draco, but he also couldn't deny the appeal of it. But it wasn't like it was the _only_ reason. He'd enjoyed it last time and while he couldn't say he had any great overwhelming desire to do it again, he didn't not want to either. There was a strange sort of disconnect between his brain and his body. Even knowing it could feel good, his brain didn't care whether or not he did it; it was just as happy to quit as it was to go ahead. His body, on the other hand, was decidedly more interested. That was his hormones, he supposed, although he'd thought they were supposed to make him more mentally desperate for it, too.

Well, whatever. He was happy to go ahead with what they were doing.

"Alright?" Draco asked quietly, stroking his face. They lay side by side on a low circular bed, the dark walls painted gently by the firelight, safe and quiet from the rest of the school—the rest of the world.

Instead of answering, Harry rolled his hips forward and Draco's breath caught, body immediately responding in kind. Harry grinned and kissed him, and as they lay together, kissing and touching and rubbing against one another until they were both satiated, he let his Occlumency take over and made sure Draco was the only one he thought of.

Harry ate lightly at dinner that evening, unsure what would be served at Slughorn's supper party. Draco pouted a little when Harry excused himself, but didn't seem too put out and as Harry left he saw Pansy Parkinson sidle up to Draco. Draco had been spending a lot of time with him over the past two weeks and Harry thought his other friends might be feeling a bit neglected. It'd do him good to spend some time with them.

 _Can't say the same for you,_ muttered the voice as Tyler jogged to join up with Harry for the walk to Slughorn's office. _I'm getting a bit sick of this guilt train you're riding._

Harry bit his lip to keep from replying. He couldn't help feeling a sickening surge every time Tyler came near him, more so than with the rest of his friends because Tyler reminded him of Alex and Charlie, but much as he disliked it himself he was also glad for it. As long as he felt guilty, he knew he wasn't becoming a monster.

He hadn't been sure what kind of party a man like Slughorn would hold, but it turned out to be an informal sitting. He lounged in an extravagant squishy chair while Harry and the rest of the students sat in harder, lower seats, and a low table between them was laid with light foods that they helped themselves to as they chatted.

Slughorn did most of the talking. He prattled on quite a lot about past members of the 'Slug Club', as he termed the group, and when he spoke to them he played obvious favourites with the people there. He positively fawned over Cormac McLaggen, who appeared to know half the higher ups in the Ministry of Magic. Tyler, sat beside Harry, looked thoroughly unimpressed by McLaggen's boasting, but when Slughorn asked about the people Marcus knew, Tyler offered little information.

When the party broke up and Slughorn dismissed them all, Hermione caught Harry in the corridor outside and tugged his arm through hers, much to his surprise.

"Walk me back to Gryffindor?" she asked.

"Um, sure," he agreed, and wondered why McLaggen gave him a glare as he passed the two of them. Probably he didn't like Slytherins and Gryffindors getting so cosy.

"How are you doing?" Hermione asked. "I know we're sharing classes now, but we hardly get to actually chat."

"I'm alright," he answered. "Working hard. Glad to be back. How are you doing?"

"Me? I'm fine."

He looked at her and she looked at him, and then she smiled thinly and hugged his arm.

"Really, Harry, I'm okay. It's exhausting to be afraid all the time and I have so much to focus on now we're back at school. I've hardly thought about the curse at all."

"Really?"

"Well, once or twice," she admitted. "I can't ever truly forget about it, but I have plenty to distract me from it. Half the other Gryffindors thought they'd get to doss about during our free periods this year, but we've got so much work. Not that they can complain, most of them are taking half the classes I am, and I'm managing just fine."

Harry laughed. "I'm sure you are."

"How are you managing? You've skipped a whole year, is it a lot more difficult?"

"It's not so bad. I wish there wasn't so much homework, but the material itself is manageable. How's Neville handling it?"

Neville was only taking three classes that year: Defence, Herbology, and Charms. Apparently his grandmother had wanted him to take Transfiguration, but he'd only got an Acceptable in the OWL.

"He's doing alright. He can focus a lot better when he's only taking subjects he actually enjoys." She shot him a glance and added a little apologetically, "I think he's better now he doesn't have to face your dad three times a week."

"Understandable," Harry said with false solemness, and Hermione laughed. She sighed lightly, relaxed, and leant into his side.

"We broke up, you know."

Harry glanced at her, surprised. "You and Neville? Why?"

She shrugged. "It just wasn't working between us. It wasn't messy or anything, we haven't fought and fallen out so don't worry about that. It's just after spending most of the summer with him, I realised we're not really suited like that. We're better as just friends and he agreed."

"Oh," Harry said. "Um… I guess I don't need to give any sympathy if you're happy about it."

"No," she said with a smile. "No sympathy necessary. Except over the fact that McLaggen seems to fancy me."

Harry wrinkled his nose. "Doesn't really seem your type. Although he does play Quidditch and you liked Viktor Krum well enough…"

She smacked him lightly. "Shut up. And no, McLaggen is definitely not my type."

"So who is? I'm sure we can find you someone."

"Taking up matchmaking as a hobby now?"

Harry shook his head rapidly. "Definitely not. I had enough trouble with my own romance."

She looked a little startled at that. "Are you and Malfoy…?"

"Oh, no, we're fine." He thought of that afternoon and felt his cheeks grow warm. "We're great. I just meant, I didn't even realise he fancied me until the first time he kissed me."

"When was that?"

"Summer before fourth year, when I ran away."

She stopped short. "You saw him that summer?"

He felt a little twinge of guilt as he realised he hadn't told her that. "Yeah. Briefly, just once. I just found out about James getting kidnapped and Snape being my dad and things were…"

Her expression softened. "I understand," she said and they resumed walking. "So you never realised Malfoy fancied you all that time during fourth year? Your third, I mean."

"No. Cid and Tyler said he did, but I always thought they were just teasing me."

"It was pretty obvious."

"I was a bit distracted that year," he grumbled defensively, "what with the tournament and all."

"Of course," she agreed, obviously humouring him, and laughed when he scowled at her.


	39. Chapter 39

**Chapter 39**

Three weeks into September, a letter came for Harry. Aside from those times during his third year after he was outed as the Boy Who Lived, the only mail he got at school was from Saint Mungo's, or notes from teachers. As such, he was surprised to take an envelope from a tawny owl that Saturday morning and turn it to find no seal stamped into the wax on the back. Curious, he slit it open and unfolded the letter inside.

 _Dear Harry,_

 _I saw the recent news of your true parentage and felt it was pertinent to contact you. I shall do you the mercy of assuming you don't know who I am, instead of thinking your never contacting me is a matter of bad manners. Given what I've heard of your upbringing, such manners wouldn't be a surprise._

Harry disliked this person already, but he was intrigued nonetheless and kept reading.

 _My name is Geraldine Henrietta Prince, sister of Eileen Marianne Snape née Prince, the mother of your late father._

Harry stopped, read the line again, and again.

Eileen Marianne Snape. His _grandmother_.

He'd never thought about Snape's family. He spent so long hating the man that he hadn't even wondered what other family he, Harry, got from him. For so long the Dursleys were his only blood relatives and they were such a poor example as to put him off any others.

Now though…

 _I shall get to the point of this correspondence. I neither know nor care why my nephew didn't recognise you as his own while he was alive. Whatever his reasons, I would normally applaud his decision; bastards are not to be acknowledged._

 _However, circumstances are forcing me to reconsider my position. My sister, your grandmother, currently resides in the Roundleaf Residential Facility. Your father placed her there and paid the fee for her care until his recent passing, at which point the burden fell to me._

 _Unfortunately, I don't have the funds to continue paying the facility's exorbitant prices. I'm also unable to care for my dear sister myself. As the only other living relative, it falls on you to provide aid. I understand you inherited everything my nephew owned; it's only fair you inherit his debts, too._

 _As an unacknowledged bastard, I realise you have little reason to provide such financial support. I don't know you well enough to appeal to your better nature; you may not have one. I only remind you that we are talking of your grandmother and her comfort late in life. If she cannot remain at Roundleaf, I will be forced to place her in a far less caring home._

 _If that is not enough, against my better judgement I am willing to overlook the unfortunate circumstances of your birth and recognise you as a descendent of the Prince family. We have little in the way of fortune or land, but there are a few heirlooms still worth something._

 _I am childless. My sister and I are all that remain of the Prince family. Upon our deaths, all our belongings will be claimed by the avaricious imbeciles that run our Ministry. Much as it pains me to say, I would rather see it go to a bastard than line the pockets of the government._

 _I expect to hear from you by the end of the month. If I don't, I shall assume you care nothing for your grandmother._

 _With regards,_

 _Geraldine Prince_

"Who's that from?"

Harry looked up as Draco dropped onto the bench beside him, dressed in his Quidditch gear and bringing a chill with him. The team had done abysmally at their last practice session so Draco had punished them with a crack of dawn practice today. Harry saw the rest of them dropping onto the bench at other spots, shooting Draco sleepy, hateful looks. Draco himself looked windswept but otherwise perfectly well.

"My great-aunt."

"You sound surprised. She doesn't write often?"

"I didn't even know I _had_ a great-aunt."

Draco looked up from spreading jam over his toast. "Did you not?"

"I never asked my dad about it," he admitted. Somewhere in the past few weeks 'Snape' had become 'Dad', though it still felt a little odd to say. "I spent so long being angry at him that I never asked about his family. I've got a grandmother, too."

"Presumably you've got a grandfather as well."

"I don't know. This doesn't say anything. Maybe he's dead."

"She can probably tell you," Draco said, pointing his knife at the letter. "What's she say?"

Harry skimmed over the letter again. "She wants me to pay for my grandma's care." The word sat strangely in his mouth, but also made him smile a bit.

"Is that it?"

"In between all the insults, yeah."

"She insulted you while asking for money? Has the woman no sense of decorum at all? Refuse her."

Harry tried to scowl at him, but he couldn't help smiling at Draco saying Geraldine had no manners when she said the same of Harry. "It's my grandma, I can't not help her."

"Why not? You've never even met the woman."

"That's not her fault. Apparently she's in a care home that Dad was paying for, but my great-aunt can't afford it so she's asking me to or my grandma has to go to a place that's not as good."

"Your choice, I suppose," Draco said. "You should probably visit her first, at least. Your grandmother, not this aunt who insults you. And you should demand something from this woman in exchange."

"She already said she'll, uh…" he checked the letter again, "Well, she doesn't explicitly say, but she talks about some family heirlooms. She doesn't want the Ministry getting them when she and my grandma die so she's willing to overlook the 'unfortunate circumstances' of my birth. I guess that means I'll inherit them."

"Make sure she confirms it," Draco warned. "She could easily will them to someone else if she finds some distant relative. Bastards always get the short end of the stick in matters of inheritance. What's the family name anyway? My father said Snape was a half-blood and—"

" _What?_ "

"You really didn't know anything about him, did you?"

Harry flushed, looking away. "We didn't exactly get along much," he mumbled.

There was a pause, then: "Sorry, I didn't mean to… well, anyway, there are no other wizard Snapes that my father ever heard of so his mother must have been the witch. What's her name?"

"Prince. Eileen Prince."

"Sounds vaguely familiar," Draco said as if that was all the approval needed. Then he paused with a cup of tea half raised. "Prince."

"That's what I said."

Draco set down the cup. "Your book."

"What book?"

"The potions book. The one that owned by the Half-Blood Prince."

Harry stared at him. "Wait, you… you think…" He looked down at the letter, back up again. "My dad…"

"It makes sense, doesn't it? The book came from the store cupboard in the potion classroom, and I can't imagine Slughorn cleared it out since taking over. Snape easily could have left it there."

It did make sense. Harry suddenly wanted to take a trip to Spinner's End, to ask Snape about the family he'd never known. He thought at first of using the enchanted notebooks after breakfast, but then immediately decided against the idea. He wanted to actually talk to Snape about this, not just write to him.

Sneaking out the school would be easy enough, but would his absence go unnoticed? Perhaps if no one came looking for him. It was a Saturday so he had no classes to get to. Only Draco might be a real problem; what excuse could he use for why he was vanishing for an indeterminate time? He could claim he was summoned by Voldemort. He didn't like lying to Draco, but he could at least get Draco to cover for him in the event someone else came looking.

 _Go tonight,_ the voice suggested. _It's less risky._

That was more sensible, he realised, even if it did mean waiting to find out more information.

The day seemed to take an eternity to pass. He joined Hermione and Neville in the Room of Requirement to catch up with them, the room styled after the old sitting room that Harry made up during his year in hiding. Their shared classes now meant they spent more time together than they used to, but it wasn't time to just hang out, so that afternoon was spent playing exploding snap and chatting. Hermione was avoiding the amorous intentions of Cormac McLaggen, Neville had taken on a personal Herbology experiment under Professor Sprout's guidance, and Harry told them about his newly discovered family.

"Can you even afford to pay for your grandma's care?" Hermione asked, sprawled on a beanbag and watching Neville build a tower of cards. "Didn't you say you'd given half your money back to James? It's not like you have any income, either."

"I do actually," Harry said, and told them about being partner in Weasley Wizard Wheezes. They were doing extremely well, and he had plenty of steady income from it. Between that and the fact he wasn't prone to extravagant purchases, he was sure he had enough to pay whatever the Roundleaf prices were, though he realised he should find out the exact details before he agreed to take responsibility for his grandma's care.

"At least you know who the Half-Blood Prince is now," Neville said, brow furrowed as he concentrated on carefully balancing his cards. "Hermione can stop getting in a fuss over it."

"I didn't get in a fuss," Hermione replied hotly. "It was perfectly justifiable concern. _I_ remember what happened last time you wrote in strange books you found," she said to Harry with a pointed look.

"Dad's textbook is nothing like Riddle's diary," Harry said, not for the first time. "The diary responded to me. This is just notes scribbled in the margins. Nothing to worry about. Dad's not going to possess me and make me attack the students."

"He'd just make you insult them," Neville quipped. Harry laughed, and even Hermione's mouth twitched, and then she laughed properly when Neville's cards blew up, leaving him streaked with soot and missing his eyebrows.

That night, shortly before midnight, Harry Wished for everyone in Slytherin to go to bed, and for his dormmates to fall asleep so they wouldn't notice his absence, and then slipped out the common room. Ten minutes later, he appeared in Snape's living room. The house was dark and quiet, but a peek with his eye showed Snape still awake, reading in bed. He got up even without Harry doing anything, undoubtedly feeling his pendant warm, so Harry just lit some candles and waited for Snape to come down.

He soon appeared, dressing gown thrown hastily over his pyjamas and wand in hand. "What are you doing here?"

"Nothing's wrong," Harry said. He reached into his pocket and withdrew Geraldine's letter. "I just… I got this this morning and…"

He trailed off and held it out. Snape came over and took it, unfolding it and reading it over. A scowl came instantly over his face and gradually twisted into a sneer the further he got down the letter. When he finished, he thrust it back towards Harry.

"Typical Aunt Geraldine."

There was a hatred in his voice normally reserved for Gryffindors. Harry took the letter.

"She's always that rude?"

Snape snorted. "By her standards, that's almost polite." He went to his armchair and sat, watching Harry as he settled on the sofa. "I assume you're here now because you want to know more."

Harry nodded. "I don't know anything about your family. My family. Draco said Lucius said you're a half-blood. Is that true?"

Snape nodded stiffly. "My father was a Muggle." He said it like he was grinding glass between his teeth.

"You're really the Half-Blood Prince, then."

Snape looked at him sharply. "Where did you hear that?"

"I've got your old copy of _Advanced Potion Making_. I had a seizure in my first class and my cauldron melted and ruined mine, so Professor Slughorn gave me one from the cupboard to borrow."

Snape blew out an irritable breath. "I forgot I left that in there. Don't go trying all of the spells I left in that," he warned. "Some of them could get you expelled. Or arrested, for that matter."

Harry raised his eyebrows at that, but Snape didn't elaborate and Harry had more important things to talk about.

"So is your dad in the care home too?"

Snape's lip curled. "Roundleaf is a facility for witches and wizards; my father would never have been admitted."

"He's dead then."

"Thankfully."

Harry's jaw dropped at that. Snape stood up.

"Do you want something to drink?" he asked, heading for the kitchen.

"Water, please."

Harry listened to him clatter about for a minute, then he came back with a glass of water that he passed to Harry, and a shot glass and bottle of vodka for himself. He poured a shot, but stopped before drinking it, glaring at the liquid inside. Harry said nothing. Eventually Snape sighed, set the glass aside, and spoke.

"My father was a miserable drunk. He died of liver failure before your first birthday. No one wept for him, least of all me."

"What about your mum? Didn't she love him?"

Snape's lips tightened and he glanced at the vodka, but didn't take it. "Perhaps. Certainly she did once upon a time, but… in any case, by the time he died she was already in Roundleaf. She has dementia."

"Oh," Harry said, then: "So… does she know about me?"

Some of the tension in Snape's face eased. "That's not a simple question. I've told her about you, more than once, but because of her condition…"

"She doesn't remember."

"No."

"Why'd you never tell me about her? That's my grandma."

"The matter of family never exactly came up between us," Snape pointed out, and Harry didn't argue with him. He couldn't really get annoyed at Snape for not discussing family when Harry never bothered to ask about it.

Instead he asked, "Is that really all the family left? Just your mum and Aunt Geraldine?"

"For the most part. I think there's a second or third cousin somewhere—the Martins, or something—but I've never even met them myself."

"What about on your dad's side?"

Snape drummed his fingers on the arm of the chair, then said reluctantly, "An uncle—my father's brother—but he moved to Argentina when I was young. The last I recall of him is a birthday card when I was ten. I haven't the faintest idea where he might be or if he's even still alive."

Harry's shoulders slumped. He didn't realise until that moment just how much he liked the thought of having other family. He might never have thought about it before, but Geraldine's letter had brought a tiny beacon of hope that Snape now crushed.

He realised Snape was staring at him. "What?"

"I'm sorry if you'd got your hopes up."

Harry shrugged. "It would have been nice, that's all."

Snape looked away. His gaze fell on one of the bookshelves, and then he stood, went to it, and pulled out a leather-bound journal. He passed it to Harry before returning to his seat.

"What's this?" The front cover was blank, but the first page inside had the name _Mirella Prince_ written in looping handwriting. It looked at least three hundred years old.

"The journal of one of our ancestors. I cannot give you anything in the way of family, but perhaps that will be of interest. She was enamoured under a vampire seduction during the uprising of the sixteenth century. Personally, I—"

"She was alive during the rebellion?" Harry broke in, gasping. He hastily but carefully opened the journal. "There's almost no firsthand accounts from that! The vampires destroyed everything! Where did you get this?"

"It was passed down through the family." Snape sounded vaguely amused, that same uncomprehending indulgence people usually got when Harry started talking about history. "She went mad early on; I hadn't thought it reliable or particular interesting, but you're the historian."

"Do you know which side she was on?"

Snape frowned. "As I said, she was under the seduction, on the vampires' side."

Harry waved a hand, not looking up from the journal. "Yeah, but whose? I mean, we don't have much on the uprising, but we do know the vampires weren't fully united. There was a split, although no one's sure why exactly. Hastings theorised that Gabriel Valentine—"

"Harry," Snape interrupted. "I respect your interests, but I don't care for what vampires were doing in the fifteen hundreds."

"Right," Harry muttered distractedly, unbothered by the dismissal. It was more polite than when Cid or Tyler put a stop to his history rambling, and his thoughts were on the journal in his lap. Some of it was in Latin, but he was getting pretty good at that, and Mirella used Early Modern English that was far easier to read than Nyneve's Old English. He would be able to read this fairly quickly, and he was already starting to think about necromancy and vampires. He wondered if Nyneve's had anything to say on the matter; he would have to get on with his translations, which he'd been neglecting since term started.

"You should probably return to Hogwarts."

"What? Oh." He reluctantly shut the book, looking up. "I suppose."

"Harry," Snape said as he stood, his tone catching all Harry's attention. "You needn't pay anything towards my mother's care. My aunt is lying through her teeth about not being able to afford it."

Harry looked down, running his fingers over the journal. "I don't mind helping out. She is my grandma."

"It's not your responsibility."

He shrugged. "I'll think about it." He paused, glanced up, back down again. "Do you think I could go visit her? Your mum."

Snape didn't answer immediately and when Harry looked up again, Snape was watching him.

"She won't know who you are," he warned. "If she's having a bad day, she may be moody. Dealing with someone with dementia can be difficult."

"She's my grandma," Harry said quietly. "I've never had a grandma. I'd like to see her at least once."

Snape picked up his shot of vodka and downed it, then stood, picking up the bottle. "Get permission. From the headmaster," he clarified at Harry confused look. "I know what you're like. There's no need for you to sneak out to visit her. Tell the headmaster and… who's your head of house now?"

"Professor Sinistra. You don't mind if I go?"

Snape shrugged and headed towards the kitchen. "If you really want to see her, I can hardly stop you, and as you say, she's your grandmother. Just don't forget what I said."

"I won't," he said. He lingered until Snape returned from the kitchen. "What should I say to your aunt? Do you think I should visit her, too?"

" _Absolutely not!_ "

Harry was startled by his vehemence. "Why not?"

"You saw her attitude towards you. Do you think that being born out of wedlock is the only reason she has to dislike you? The woman breathes prejudices and cannot open her mouth without insulting someone."

"She's a blood purist?"

"Not to the degree of people like the Malfoys. She's fairly forgiving of Muggleborns; less so of Muggles."

"Well, you're a half-blood and mum was Muggleborn," Harry said, but Snape shook his head.

"Your blood may not be an issue for her, but she has other prejudices. Most notably in your case, she cares nothing for the disabled; why do you think she's trying to foist my mother's care to you? Quite frankly, I'm surprised she refrained from commenting on your health in her letter."

"I can put my green eye in," Harry suggested. "It's not like she can see that I'm epileptic."

"You realise you've had two absence seizures since you got here."

"I did?"

"Brief ones. Have you been back to Kirith yet?"

"No. My appointment's in three weeks."

Snape nodded, and got back to their original topic. "Ultimately, it's your choice, but I strongly advise against visiting my aunt. Don't feel obliged to pay my mother's care, either. Despite her words, my aunt won't actually move her to another facility; she's just trying to wring money out of you, and the heirlooms she's promising you are next to worthless. That's assuming she even keeps her word."

"I'll think about it," Harry said, then said his goodbyes and left.

* * *

It was the first time Harry had cause to visit Professor Sinistra's office, which was on the fifth floor. She hadn't moved since becoming their head of house, even though Snape's old office was bigger (and empty; Professor Slughorn demanded a larger office on the first floor), but Harry heard she had moved her sleeping quarters to the dungeons. Harry didn't know where she'd been before, but presumably she'd moved to be closer to the Slytherin common room. Given she was the Astronomy teacher, Harry didn't think the relocation would help much if there was a midnight emergency.

She wasn't a teacher he ever developed much of a relationship with, either positive or negative. He felt a little awkward going to her as a head of house; his month living with Snape before his first year had made him comfortable with the man as a head of house, regardless of the various difficulties between them over the years. He wasn't so easy about speaking to Professor Sinistra, but he realised wanting permission to visit family was a matter she had to deal with. He did consider going straight to Dumbledore, but realised it might be rude to go over Sinistra's head like that.

As it was, the first thing she said after he explained the situation was, "You'll need the headmaster's permission, Mr Evans. I'm sure you realise that leaving the school right now is a complex matter, given our new security protocols."

"Yes, professor."

"I'll speak to him. You'll also need Black's permission. He's your legal guardian," she added at his surprised look. "You need him to give permission for you to be taken off the grounds during the school term, even if he is a teacher himself. He can be the one to escort you, if you like."

He nodded, hiding his irritation. Why was it that, after years of being alone and self-sufficient, it was now, when he was less than a year from legal adulthood, that people insisted on treating him like a child?

He spoke to Sirius the next day, and eventually it was arranged that Sirius would take him to Roundleaf on the morning of 19th October, when there was a Hogsmeade weekend. He wrote to Roundleaf to let them know he'd be coming, uncertain if he could just turn up unannounced, and got a surprisingly enthusiastic reply saying they were sure Eileen would be glad to see him.

 _How glad can she be about meeting someone she doesn't know exists and will forget once you've left? This whole trip is a colossal waste of time._

He wrote back to Geraldine, sending it on the second to last day of the month. Despite what Snape said, Harry did feel some obligation to contribute towards Eileen's care, but he didn't want to give the impression he was only doing it for the supposed reward of the heirlooms Geraldine promised. On the other hand, he also felt that refusing the inheritance while paying for the care would be letting Geraldine win completely. In the end he said he would pay the next bill, wording it as a heavily gracious act, but would decide whether or not to pay more after he'd been to visit Eileen. At Draco's pushing suggestion he also mentioned, almost offhandedly, that he was an orphaned sixteen-year-old schoolchild, and it was unfair to expect him to take sole financial responsibility for his grandmother.

"What about when she points out I've got a filthy rich godfather?" Harry asked. Draco waved it off.

"Unless she can prove a close enough relationship between Sirius and the Princes, she can't expect him to pay towards your grandmother's care, and if she does prove it, you can point out that she should ask _him_ for money instead of you."

Geraldine's reply didn't mention Sirius, but it did insult Harry even more than the last letter while she tried to insist he was obligated to pay forever if he paid once. She cast aspersions on his character, made a jab about relying on magic just to see properly, and wondered how much of his 'mental impairment' (her way of calling him stupid) was damage from epilepsy, damage from Vernon's abuse, or simply inherited from his Muggle grandparents.

"I can see the family resemblance," Draco said when Harry showed him the letter, and then, at Harry's outraged look, hastily clarified, "Between her and Snape, not you. These are the kind of things he would say about people."

Harry couldn't argue with that. He'd seen Snape make Isabelle Walker cry at least three separate times during their Potions classes.

* * *

The Dark Mark burned on the last Thursday of September.

It was late, almost everyone already in bed. Harry was getting ready himself, just brushing his teeth. He hurriedly spat then went to the dorm. Draco was still sitting up and he'd notice Harry's absence and come looking for him if Harry left straight away. Blaise Zabini was still awake too, although Theo, Crabbe, and Goyle were sleeping, but he wouldn't care if Harry came to bed late or not at all.

Harry went straight to Draco's bed, earning a smile when he knelt on the edge and bent down to put their faces close. Draco turned his up, expecting a kiss, but Harry only brushed their cheeks and put his mouth to Draco's ear.

"At least pull the curtains," Blaise said from across the room, scowling at them over the top of his Arithmancy textbook.

Harry ignored him. "I've been summoned," he murmured.

Draco jerked away, turning his face to stare wide-eyed at Harry. "Seriously?"

Harry nodded. Draco's Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. He glanced towards Blaise and then back, silent question obvious.

"I just remembered I've still got an essay for History of Magic to do," Harry said, loud enough for Blaise to hear. "I'm going to work on it in the common room."

"I'll sit with you," Draco immediately offered, already pushing his covers back.

"You pair are real subtle," Blaise said, rolling his eyes. Draco flipped him the bird.

Harry collected his books and went with Draco to the common room, which was thankfully empty. He dumped the books on a table, and Draco caught his wrist.

"Be careful," he said, leaning in for a quick kiss. "Don't get caught by the Aurors."

"They'll never see me," Harry promised. He conjured a robe straight over his pyjamas, squeezed Draco's hand, and turned invisible before slipping out into the corridor.

Escaping the school was as easy as it'd always been. The Auror patrols and extra protections offered no more resistance to him than they ever had, and before long he was teleporting to the hospital.

He was sent with Lucius to kill a Ministry employee, and Voldemort blatantly admitted that it was a test to make sure Harry hadn't 'lost his touch' in the weeks since he was last summoned. After, when they reported back, Voldemort dismissed Lucius but kept Harry.

"I hope you haven't forgotten the task I set for you."

Harry glanced up warily. "You said I have until the end of the school year."

"You do, so long as that wait does not foster sympathy in you." He stepped forward and pushed up Harry's mask. "Do not forget that I hold the lives of your friends on the tip of my tongue."

As if he ever could.

Voldemort dismissed him. Seeing as he was out, Harry took the chance to check in on Snape, thinking to update him on things with his mother, but the man was fast asleep when Harry appeared in Spinner's End, sprawled in his armchair with a book open on his lap.

Careful not to wake him, Harry took the book from his lap, and then felt an unexpected surge of grateful affection when he saw what it was about: demons. They hadn't actually discussed Harry's deal since the day he told Snape about it, and Harry couldn't have found the words to vocalise his appreciation at Snape keeping his word and researching the issue.

 _Doesn't mean he finds a way to break it,_ the voice said spitefully.

"Shut up," Harry whispered to it, and conjured a blanket to settle over Snape. Snape shifted and made a snuffling noise, but didn't wake, and Harry quietly left him again.

Draco was still waiting up in the common room when Harry got back, pacing in front of the fire. He whipped around when the door swung open, relief etched into every line of his face when Harry made himself visible. He started to approach, but then stopped.

"Are you…?"

"I'm fine, Draco," Harry assured him, going forward for a hug and immensely glad to have Draco's arms wrap tightly around him.

"What did you—"

"Don't," Harry whispered into his shoulder. "Draco, please don't ask me what I did tonight."

Draco said nothing, but the arms around him tightened and that was all Harry needed.

* * *

Harry was invited to two more Slug Club meetings before the middle of October. He got out of one through luck, having a convulsive seizure a few hours beforehand and claiming he felt entirely too bad afterwards to go to the meeting. The next time, he just outright said he didn't want to go. The invitation came on a Monday, which was his busiest in terms of classes, and his teachers dropped a boatload of homework on him, leaving him already grumpy by the time some second year came up to him in the library with a little invitation wrapped in violet ribbon.

He wrote a note of his own, trying to keep it as polite as possible, and charmed it into the shape of a butterfly and sent it fluttering off. The second years might pass on messages for teachers, but probably wouldn't play owl for him.

He regretted it later. Not only did he miss out on meeting Gwenog Jones, Captain of the Holyhead Harpies, but Slughorn was so delighted by his charm work that he was even more interested in Harry.

On the second Saturday of October, Harry flooed from the hospital wing to Saint Mungo's. He hadn't let himself linger on the issue of his epilepsy much over past months, but he was afraid of what damage might have been done during his week of torture in June, not to mention what he'd put up with since becoming a Death Eater.

He was immeasurably relieved when Kirith went over the results with him after the MRI and MEEG and declared, "They're much better than your last tests. It looks like I was right; it was just lingering effects of the torture you suffered. I do want to up your anticonvulsant dosage, however."

"Why?"

"You're having a lot," she noted, tapping his seizure diary. "Again, might be lingering effect of what happened, but it could be your age, as well. These things change as you develop. Keep track and we'll see how it goes. If they reduce and stay down, we'll see about dropping the dosage again."

* * *

A week later, Harry walked beside Sirius with the rest of the students as they left the castle for Hogsmeade. Once they were past the school gates, they stepped away from the crowd and off the path, Harry took Sirius' arm, and Sirius Apparated them away. Harry had consented to his protective measures without argument for once; he was too nervous over meeting his grandmother for the first time to get into a fight with Sirius.

Roundleaf Residential Facility was located in Somerset, on a lush acre of land that was enjoying a warm autumn which contrasted brutally with Scotland's bitter cold. Harry was instantly too warm in his cloak and robes, and he pulled the cloak off, folding it over his arm and using it as an excuse to delay the inevitable.

"Shall we go in then?" Sirius prompted. Harry swallowed and nodded and set off for the door.

They entered into a neat, bright foyer where a sign directed them to the receptionist's desk. A young woman behind it greeted them with a bright smile.

"Hi! What can I do for you today?" Her tone was gratingly cheerful and vaguely condescending.

"I'm here to see Eileen Snape," Harry said, feeling stupid and not sure why. "I'm her grandson."

"Oh, sure! We got your letter." She leant forwards over her desk, eyes flicking up to Harry's lightning bolt scar, and Harry got a whiff of sweet perfume. "Can I just say, it's such an honour to meet you, Harry."

"Er, right," Harry said. "So… where do I go?"

The woman sat back with a laugh. Harry wasn't sure what was so funny. "Just sign in here and then you can go right through."

She pushed a guest register towards him and passed over a quill. Harry scribbled his name and the time in the columns indicated and passed it back.

"Okay! Straight through those doors, she'll be in the common room, just ask one of the nurses!"

"Do you want me to come with you?" Sirius asked.

Harry bit back a smart comment about being allowed out of Sirius' sight, and settled for just shaking his head. Sirius went to sit at a small waiting area, picking up an old _Quibbler_ to flick through, and Harry headed further into the building.

The doors took him through to a wide hall. In one direction it was lined with closed doors until the corner, and in the other it opened up into a large communal room, filled with chairs and sofas, tables, and some twenty people. Most of them were old, a few wore pale pink robes with the Roundleaf Facility insignia on the back, and the rest were presumably guests, sitting and talking or reading or playing chess.

One of the people in pink robes came up to Harry. She was a few years older than Harry, who thought he recognised her from Hogwarts but couldn't recall a name.

"Can I help you?"

"I'm, uh, I'm Eileen Snape's grandson."

"It's true then," the woman said, eyes flicking briefly to Harry's scar. "You're really Snape's son."

"Yes."

"Hell of a shocker."

"Right." There was a pause. "So… where is she?"

The worker pointed across the common room to a woman sitting alone in a wheelchair, parked by a set of patio doors and looking out into a sprawling garden.

"Thanks."

Harry watched Eileen for a moment, but she was faced away from him and he couldn't see anything but grey hair hanging past her shoulders, a shawl wrapped around her. He went over, moving around when he got closer so he could approach from the side and not startle her. She looked around when he was a few feet away, and he stopped. Harry hadn't seen enough old witches and wizards to estimate their ages, but by Muggle standards he would have guessed she was maybe sixty. Wrinkles marred her face, but she didn't have as many as some of the other residents around the room. Despite that, he thought he could see something of Snape in her face, and perhaps even something of himself in the slant of her eyes and shape of her brow.

To his surprise, when she saw him, she smiled and held out a wrinkled hand. "Severus," she greeted warmly.

Harry felt like he'd been dropped in the lake at Hogwarts.

' _Dealing with someone with dementia can be difficult,'_ Snape had said. Harry had done a little bit of reading, just to understand what it actually was, but mostly he'd just imagined that this would be a meeting of two strangers. He'd thought that he would introduce himself to Eileen and they would talk a bit, that she might get confused a few times and then forget him completely when he left, but he hadn't expected this.

No one ever mistook him for Snape. A few times in the past six weeks he'd caught people staring at him and they would admit that, now they knew his parentage, they could see some resemblance, but there was enough of Lily in him that his looks were different to Snape. The fact that no one had ever looked at them standing together during Harry's time at Hogwarts and even suspected their relationship was evidence enough.

"Aren't you gong to come sit with your mother, Severus?" Eileen chided.

Harry opened his mouth, shut it, licked his lips, opened it again, and shut it once more. He pulled over a chair, took her hand, and sat down. He wanted to tell her that he wasn't Snape, that he wasn't her son, but he didn't know how. She was looking at him with such affection in her gaze it almost hurt.

"You look sad," she said. "Are those boys at school still giving you trouble?"

"Sirius and James," Harry said without even thinking, knowing it had to have been them that Snape would have complained about.

"Is that their names? You must be getting along better if you're using their first names. Tell me what they did this time."

"Nothing."

Eileen's fingers squeezed his hand slightly, perhaps as much as she was able. "Don't lie to your mother, Severus. I can see it in your face. I've always been able to read you, you know. You're upset, and if it's not those boys then it must be the Evans girl."

Harry's breath hitched; he couldn't help it. Eileen smiled.

"Ahh, that's it then. Did you have a falling out?"

Harry didn't know the details of Snape's friendship with Lily. It was another thing besides family that he'd not asked much about. He knew they'd been friends as children, fallen out during their Hogwarts years, and then hardly spoken again until the night of the affair. He didn't know what the falling out had been about, but he was guessing it was over Lily going out with and eventually marrying James. Either that, or Snape becoming a Death Eater. Maybe it was both.

Eileen was looking expectant, so Harry nodded.

"What was it about?"

Harry hesitated. He would have to make something up, or claim it was all about James, but he wasn't sure he could do it convincingly. He tried to imagine how he'd feel if Draco left him for someone else, but in truth he could hardly imagine it. If there was one thing he didn't doubt, it was Draco's love for him.

"Tell me, Severus. I know you don't think much of your father and I, but I'm sure I can give you some advice on matters of the heart."

"It's not that. It's… I… I betrayed her," he finally said. He didn't know details, but he could pretend. Maybe Snape and Lily's falling out had been over his becoming a Death Eater, and Harry could work with that. He only had to imagine the disappointment his mum would feel if she found out he was a Death Eater.

"What did you do?" Eileen asked. She didn't sound disappointed or angry or judgemental, she just wanted to know. Harry found himself unable to meet her gaze, staring instead at their hands.

"I… I gave my loyalty to someone else." He didn't know what Eileen knew about Snape and the Death Eaters, either, so he had to be careful with that. "Someone that hates her. I agreed to work for them."

"Why?"

"Because he threatened my friends. He said if I didn't do what he said then he'd hurt them."

"Does Lily know that?"

Did she? Was his mum up in heaven somewhere, looking down and seeing everything that happened? He hoped not. He couldn't stand the thought of her seeing the things he'd done.

He shook his head.

"Oh, Severus," Eileen sighed. Her other hand came across and patted his, once, twice, then clasped it between both her own. "I know how you like to handle everything on your own, but if someone is threatening to hurt people, you can ask for help. I know you don't like those teachers of yours, but they are meant to protect the students. Couldn't you tell one of them?"

Harry thought of telling Professor Sinistra about his being a Death Eater, but didn't know her enough to imagine her reaction. He thought of McGonagall, and could all too easily imagine her disappointment and hate.

"That face says no. You don't have to protect your friends all by yourself. There must be someone that can help you."

"No one can help me."

"There's always someone that can help us, Severus, we just have to find them. Have hope."

Hope was extremely thin on the ground right now, he thought. What could he hope for? That Dumbledore's lessons came through and eventually did provide him a way to kill Voldemort? It was weak. He'd had one lesson with no sign of another any time soon. If Dumbledore kept to this rate, Harry would have to kill him before he taught Harry anything useful.

But, he thought suddenly, there was one sliver of hope in the darkness: Bill Weasley. Ginny said he was focusing all his efforts on finding a counter-curse for the Word of Death Curse. If he did, if he freed them from it, then Harry would kill the Death Eaters and lock Voldemort away until Dumbledore gave him what he needed to kill him. He would bury Voldemort in a box twenty feet below the ground, take away his wand, put magic suppression cuffs on him. Without his magic and without his followers, Voldemort was no threat.

But all that depended on Bill Weasley, and Harry had no idea how good he was at his job. Some curses took years to break, and Harry was likely to be dead and in hell by then.

"Severus?"

A hint of sadness seeped into Eileen's voice and Harry felt guilty, so he forced his gaze up and pushed a small smile on his face.

"There's one person," he told her. "He's trying to help. And I'm working on it. One day I'll be able to stop him hurting my friends."

She smiled, the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth deepening. "There, then, you're not completely alone." She squeezed his hand. "And you'll always have me."

Harry didn't know how to respond to that, or what to name the emotion filling his chest. He knew it wasn't exactly aimed at him, that those words were for Snape, but hearing them made him suddenly glad that he'd come here and met her.

"Now, tell me how your schoolwork's been this term," she said, and Harry did. He had to hedge it a bit when she asked how Arithmancy was going, and wanted to laugh when he realised Snape must have done as badly at Astronomy as he did. He avoided talking too much on History and made her smile when he said he was doing well in Transfiguration, which he gathered was a bit of a weak spot for Snape.

He was almost a bit disappointed when he had to leave, but he'd been there an hour and Eileen was looking tired. She looked sad when he stood up, but didn't object, just said, "Give you mum a hug before you leave."

Harry felt a bit awkward about that, but he wasn't going to refuse her. He bent and carefully put his arms around her neck, almost afraid of hurting her. Her own arms rose to come around his back, resting on either side of his spine, and she turned her head to kiss his cheek. Her lips felt papery against his skin and he twitched a little.

Then she said quietly, "I love you," and Harry's eyes filled with tears.

He squeezed his eyes shut against them and shifted his grip, hugging her more firmly now. Her own hands patted his back.

"There now," she said. "Come on. Off with you."

He nodded, drawing back and hastily rubbing his eyes before she saw. He muttered a goodbye and hurried away. In the foyer he signed out at the receptionist's desk and stalked out the front doors, tears spilling down his face freely now.

Sirius caught his shoulder, spinning him around. "Hey. What's wrong?"

Harry shook his head, not trusting himself to speak. Not able to. He couldn't explain this to Sirius, that he was crying because he'd been hugged by his grandmother. Because he'd heard her say _I love you_ , not as a grandmother to a grandson, but as a mother to her child. That fact that he wasn't the child she thought he was, or that she wasn't his mother, didn't matter. It wasn't the same as hearing it from Kiwi, even if the recording in Kiwi was Lily's voice, and it was completely different to hearing it from Draco or Sirius. This was an _I love you_ that he'd never heard, thought he could never hear, and it made him cry with relief and regret and longing and love.

Sirius, thankfully, didn't push for an answer, he just pulled Harry into a hug, holding him tightly and saying nothing as Harry sobbed into his shoulder.


	40. Chapter 40

**Chapter 40**

Harry's eyes were red but dry when he and Sirius reappeared outside of Hogwarts.

"You going into the village now?" Sirius asked. "Or do you want to come up to the castle and get some lunch with me?"

Harry was about to say he'd go with Sirius if they could eat in his rooms; it was too obvious he'd been crying and he didn't want the students in Hogsmeade to see. But just as he opened his mouth to answer, pain burnt through his arm. He just managed to hide the twitch from Sirius and bit down on a gasp.

Silently cursing Voldemort, he lied to Sirius, "I'm going to the village. I said I'd meet Draco there."

"Alright." Sirius reached over to ruffle his hair. "I'll see you later. Look after yourself."

Harry nodded. As Sirius turned up the path towards the gates, Harry turned down, heading away until he was out of sight of the Aurors standing guard outside. Then he darted into the trees, moving until he was hidden from the path, Wished for his Death Eater mask and for his navy robes to turn black, and teleported away.

He was to go with Antonin and kidnap a potion dealer. A surge of high quality illegal potions had hit the black market lately and, with Snape 'dead' and Slughorn firmly within Dumbledore's safe grasp, Voldemort needed a new skilled brewer. They'd already traced the potions back to one particular dealer, David Fuller, who'd given up his supplier, Herbert Smith, in a heartbeat, and Antonin had met him once already to try and convince him to work for them. He'd failed, much to his disgruntlement, so now Voldemort intended to force the man.

The information made Harry's mouth go drier than a camel's bones. He couldn't help thinking of Snape and wondering with no little horror if he was this Herbert Smith. What the hell was Harry supposed to do if it was? He tried to remember what Snape's Polyjuice appearance looked like, but he'd only seen it a couple of times and never for very long. The hairs came from a Muggle that ran the local bar in Cokeworth, but that didn't help Harry remember what he looked like.

As he and Antonin headed for Fuller's house—they were to catch Smith when he delivered his potions—Harry's mind raced to come up with a way to save Snape without putting his loyalty in question and thus getting his friends killed. Maybe he could stress himself out enough to induce a seizure. Maybe he could just Wish for a seizure.

 _That is an awful idea,_ the voice said. _But it might work, assuming you don't destroy your own brain in the process._

In the end, whether Smith was Snape or not, Harry didn't have to save him. He and Antonin arrived at Fuller's house ten minutes before Smith was meant to arrive, but forty-five minutes later, there was no sign of him. Antonin spoke to Fuller, and then tortured him, and only when he was convinced that he hadn't warned Smith about them did he turn to Harry.

"Return to the Dark Lord. Find out what he wants us to do."

"Alone?" He'd never been permitted to be alone for any part of a mission before.

"I need to stay with him." He smiled at Harry, his mask tucked away in a pocket for now. "I think you've proven your loyalty to our cause enough by now. I'll see you in a few minutes."

Was a few minutes enough time to stop by Spinner's End? He hoped so, because he went anyway, but the house was empty. Where was Snape? If Fuller was right and he was just delayed for some reason, he could turn up at the dealer's house any minute. Would it be better or worse for Harry to be there when that happened?

 _Worse. There's no excuse for letting him escape if you're there, but your daddy's no slouch. He can hold his own against our friend Antonin well enough to get away._

"He's not our friend," Harry muttered, and teleported to the hospital. He explained what happened, fighting the urge to cringe away from Voldemort's angry expression at his lone appearance, and spent the longest thirty seconds of his life waiting to hear Voldemort's command.

"Bring the dealer to me."

Harry went. Snape still hadn't shown up, much to his relief, and he and Antonin took Fuller back to Voldemort. Rather than dismiss Harry afterwards, Voldemort ordered him to stay in the hospital for a while. It left him feeling a bit lost and incredibly uncomfortable; he'd never stayed in the hospital any longer than he had to and he didn't know what to do.

Antonin noticed and apparently took pity on him. "Come to the common room with me," he said, leading Harry down the hall. "We'll have a cup of tea and a chat. Kreacher!"

The ancient house elf who'd brought most of Harry's meals during his imprisonment appeared. Antonin ordered it to prepare them some tea and deliver it to the common room, then asked Harry, "Am I right in thinking you've got Nyneve's journal again? I know Lucius conjured it and passed it on to Draco; I had a feeling it might be for you."

"Yeah," Harry said, glancing around warily. He wasn't sure Lucius would be too happy to find Harry had the journal.

"How are your translations going?"

"Slow, but it's interesting. A bit gross sometimes because she experiments with, um…"

Antonin glanced back questioningly. Harry kept his gaze down as he mumbled, "Menstrual blood."

"Typical teenage boy," Antonin said, amused, pushing open a door. "It's perfectly natural; you'll get over this squeamishness eventually. I understand there are potions and ritual spells that require the use of it."

"Use of what?" said a voice in the room beyond the door, and Harry stopped short in the doorway, flinching even before his gaze snapped around to see Frederick Nott sitting in an armchair, lowering a newspaper to look over at them. The moment Harry's eyes settled on him, Nott was thrown out of his seat and crashed into the wall behind him. He crumpled to the floor, but he was already screaming and writhing in agony.

"Curious as I am to see what you'd do to him," Antonin said calmly, and Harry's eyes snapped to him, "you were forbidden from taking revenge for what was done to you so I suggest you stop now."

Shuddering, Harry reigned his magic in and Nott stopped screaming. Harry shook uncontrollably, battling against an oncoming panic attack.

A disappointed noise sounded over Nott's groans and Harry only then noticed Bellatrix lounging in an armchair. She pouted as Antonin moved over to her and sat on the arm of her chair. "I was enjoying that."

Antonin smiled at her. As nice as his usual smile was, it was nothing compared to this. Antonin was good at appearing friendly and approachable, but the look he gave Bellatrix just then was somehow more genuine, though Harry couldn't pin down exactly how.

 _He looks like Draco does when he looks at you._

"Son of a bitch," Nott groaned, and Harry's attention whipped back to him. Nott hauled himself to his feet, using a chair to help, and once he was standing unsteadily he fixed Harry with a vicious glare. Harry backed up a step. "I'm gonna make you pay for that, you little brat."

Harry spun and fled. He heard Nott yell and Bellatrix laugh, Antonin said something Harry didn't catch, but he didn't stop, just hurtled down the hall, reached the stairs, and fled up them. He didn't know where he was going, only that he had to get away from Nott but wasn't allowed to leave the hospital. The panic attack threatening him earlier hit him now, and he was so focused on trying not to let fear and memories overwhelm him that he didn't notice Lucius until he crashed into the man in the hallway.

"Watch where you're going!" Lucius snarled, closely followed by Nott's voice yelling up the stairs, "Evans!"

Harry Wished himself invisible, flung himself into the room behind Lucius, and hid behind a wardrobe as Nott's heavy footsteps clomped up the stairs. He stood there, battling to keep the panic attack from growing, and heard Nott reach the landing.

"Where is he?"

"I take it you were the one screaming," Lucius replied.

"That little sod attacked me. Where'd he go? I want some payback."

Harry thought Lucius would eagerly give him up—he made no secret of his dislike of Harry—but instead he said, "This is the first time he's seen you since his marking, isn't it?"

Harry could hear the frown in Nott's voice. "Saw him on the Bath mission. Why?"

"But not your face. This is the first time he's actually faced you since he was a prisoner."

"So what?"

"So the boy's magic is prone to uncontrolled outbursts, and Severus warned the Dark Lord that Evans would be liable to lash out at you and Bellatrix. I saw for myself his attack on Bellatrix, and the Dark Lord let it go unpunished. This was yours. Leave the boy alone."

"Since when do you give a shit about him, Malfoy?"

"I don't," Lucius said coldly. "But I don't care for you either, Nott. The Dark Lord permits our games of poker, but you know as well as I that you need his permission to pursue a grudge against a fellow Death Eater."

"He attacked me first."

"In retaliation for raping him, and whatever else you did to him this summer."

"He isn't allowed to take revenge for that."

"Then take your complaint to the Dark Lord. None of us want a repeat of what happened when the Carrow siblings had their falling out."

Harry wondered what that was about, but Nott must have known because he grumbled something too low for Harry to hear, and then started back down the stairs.

Lucius entered the bedroom, eyes sweeping over it in search of Harry, who stepped out from behind the wardrobe and made himself visible.

"Out," Lucius said curtly, his tone no less cold than when he'd been speaking to Nott. Harry left, stopped outside the room and turned to thank Lucius for standing up for him, but the door slammed in his face before he could even open his mouth.

* * *

The Assistant had two methods of getting information on Voldemort and his plans. The less dangerous method was to go after a known Death Eater and either enchant them into spilling secrets or simply break into their mind. The other was to sneak into the hospital and hang about listening to Voldemort give orders and make plans, which meant being careful to keep out of anyone's way and avoid the traps Voldemort laid for him.

If Voldemort had had any sense, he'd have just got Harry to reinforce the hospital's protections to keep the Assistant out, but evidently he preferred to try and capture him. It was a stupid move on Voldemort's part, but at least it made things interesting for the Assistant.

It was during a break in that he learned about the illicit potion brewer whom Voldemort was hoping to recruit. An influx of surprisingly high quality potions had hit the black market recently and the Death Eaters had managed to trace it back to one particular dealer. They'd already been to see him and he'd been quick to agree to arrange a meeting with his supplier, smart enough not to refuse Death Eaters and eager for the potential business. He'd be out of luck on that front; Voldemort intended to deal straight with the supplier, not with any intermediary, and the dealer was foolish enough to give up a name.

The Assistant passed the information to Dumbledore and left him to do what he would with it, but it lingered on his mind. Herbert Smith, the name of the supplier, rang familiar, but he couldn't quite place where. Someone he'd met in another timeline, presumably, but not for long enough or recently enough for him to properly recall them. Or possibly he'd dealt with the supplier himself, but been too drugged up at the time to recall him now.

Something about the name rankled him though, so when he learnt Voldemort intended to kidnap the man, he broke his decision of not directly interfering and decided to go along.

He learned of the plan when he spent one Saturday morning hanging about the hospital and Voldemort called in Harry. Normally the Assistant stayed out of Harry's missions. Seven lives depended on Harry's loyalty to Voldemort, who was capricious enough to activate the death curses if too many of Harry's missions failed, even if those failures weren't Harry's fault.

It would be safe this one time, though, so the Assistant went to the dealer's home, planted himself across the street, wrapped up in his cloak and invisible, and leant against a tree to watch Harry and Antonin enter the house.

About five minutes later, another figure appeared on the street. They Apparated into a little space between two houses that was the only place to appear unseen by any of the local Muggles, and took a moment after appearing to do a little whole-body wiggle, like they were trying to get unfamiliar clothes to sit right. It might have been amusing to an outsider, but the Assistant recognised the motion and knew the man wasn't trying to settle in unfamiliar clothes—he was trying to settle in an unfamiliar body.

The Assistant realised right then how he knew Herbert Smith, and where he recognised the face of the man that just appeared. It was the perfectly unremarkable barman and owner of one of the pubs in Cokeworth.

Smith made to move and the Assistant Apparated into the space behind him. He made no efforts to hide the noise, though he was still unseen, and wasn't surprise when Smith instantly spun, wand out and pointed straight at him.

Smith threw no spell when he saw no one there, but he didn't relax his stance, either. He opened his mouth to speak, but the Assistant didn't give him chance. He'd been willing to just talk to the man initially, to find out why he was wearing the face of a Muggle barman and warn him against the Death Eaters waiting for him, but the wand—he couldn't let that go.

With a flick of his wrist the wand leapt into his own hand at the same moment he made himself visible, already moving so that Smith had no time to defend himself against the Assistant wrapping his other hand around his throat.

The moment their flesh met, he Apparated, and when they reappeared in his cave his foot flew, caught Smith's leg and knocked it out from under him. They both went down, Smith crashing onto his back and the Assistant digging a knee into Smith's stomach, baring his teeth in a snarl as he pressed hard against Smith's throat. With his other hand he slammed the wand down beside Smith's head, though carefully not hard enough to damage it.

"Where the fuck did you get this?"

Smith gagged. The Assistant loosened his grip enough for the other man to gasp in a weak breath, and repeated the question.

"It's mine—"

The Assistant dug his knee harder into Smith's stomach and was rewarded with a weak, wheezing whine of pain.

"The owner of this wand died over three months ago, and if you've been grave robbing I can promise you, you will regret it. So save yourself some trouble and tell me who you are and where the fuck you got this wand."

Smith glared up at him and said nothing. The Assistant shifted his hand to Smith's collarbone, eased up some of the pressure on his stomach, and then sent a vicious wave of pain through the man's bones. He spasmed, screaming. The Assistant let it continue for a few seconds then stopped.

"Answer my question."

"I'll die first," Smith spat.

The Assistant bent over him, putting their faces close, and stared into his eyes. Smith glared back at him, but when the Assistant tried breaking into his mind he was met with impenetrable Occlumency barriers. Smith did a good job of throwing up false memories of a life as Herbert Smith, but he knew they were fakes.

He pulled out and sat up. "Congratulations," he said coolly. "You're one of very few people that can keep me out of their conscious mind. I could easily break past by putting you to sleep, but I prefer my other option."

He pocketed the wand, grabbed Smith's hand, and pressed it to the floor of the cave. The rock softened and moved, their hands sinking into it, and then the Assistant let go and withdrew his own hand, leaving Smith's still buried up to the wrist in what was now very solid rock. Smith tugged, eyes wide, but he'd break his hand and dislocate a couple of joints before he got free.

The Assistant broke the strap on Smith's messenger bag so he could pull it away from him, patted him down for any other wands or weapons, but only found a simple, unadorned hip flask. He stood and waved his hand to light a fire, and conjured himself a chair to settle in while he waited.

"You won't die before talking. I just have to wait for the Polyjuice to wear off."

Smith got to his knees, trying again to wrench his hand free even as he said, "I'm not using Polyjuice."

"That's funny, because last I checked Herby Smith wasn't a wizard. Also—" He opened the hip flask and took a sniff, then waved it, wrinkling his nose. "Polyjuice."

The man's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly at that. "So what?"

"So why you going around looking like ol' Herby?"

"I picked him at random."

"Maybe, maybe not." He placed Smith's bag on his lap and opened it up, pulling out the metal case inside and flipping it open to reveal half a dozen velvet-lined square trays with a dip at the centre specifically shaped to hold a vial, each filled with a different potion. Each square could be removed from the case, and doing so revealed a space beneath holding another two dozen vials of the same potion nestled in the tray.

"Nice bit of packaging you got here," the Assistant remarked. He set back the tray he'd removed then wiggled out one of the other display vials, a salmon-coloured potion the consistency of custard. He popped it opened, covered the neck with his thumb and upturned it briefly, then stuck his thumb in his mouth. He made a satisfied noise at the buzz it sent over his tongue and removed the digit with a small pop. "That's some high quality shit. No wonder Voldemort wanted you."

Smith stopped trying to pull his arm free, head snapping around to stare at him. "What?"

"Oh, yeah, didn't I mention? Couple of Death Eaters were waiting for you at the dealer's house, planning to kidnap you. Don't know if you're up for that, but I guess they'll have to catch you another time." He lifted his gaze from the case and added, "Assuming I let you leave here alive."

Smith's only reaction to that was to narrow his gaze. The Assistant returned the vial to its slot and closed the case, setting it on the floor before wriggling down in his chair, stretching his legs in front of him, and folding his hands over his stomach.

"So. What shall we do to pass the time until the Polyjuice wears off?"

"You could let me go."

"Mmm… no. Try again."

Smith glanced down at his hand, gave one last futile tug, and sat. "Why were you at Fuller's?" he asked.

"The dealer? Spying."

"On me?"

"Well… kinda. Not really. I was spying on Voldemort—" Smith flinched at the name, but that didn't tell him much "—and heard your name. Well, the name of the man whose face you're wearing. Rang a bell but I couldn't quite place it so I went to have a peek. Honestly, I was only gonna have a chat, give you a warning about Voldemort's people, but then you drew that wand and…" He gestured vaguely around the cave. "Here we are."

Smith glanced about. "Interesting place you have here."

"I am a simple man. Don't," he added when Smith raised an eyebrow, adding begrudgingly, "I set myself up for that one."

Smith merely shrugged.

"Take what humour you can get at my expense. Once I know who you really are, you won't be laughing."

He took the wand from his pocket and inspected it, turning it slowly in the firelight.

"You recognised that," Smith said. The Assistant didn't bother to give a statement that obvious even a glance of acknowledgement. "Instantly. You must have been familiar with the owner."

The Assistant did glance up then, but Smith's face was unreadable.

"I may have been." He pointed the wand and Smith tensed. "You know whose it was."

"Maybe."

"Definitely." When Smith said nothing, the Assistant twirled the wand. "I'm sure you've seen the news lately too, and know that the owner of this wand had a son."

Smith's tongue darted out just briefly to wet his lips. "Not much of one. Never acknowledged the man when he was alive."

The Assistant cocked his head. "You assume Harry knew his parentage when Severus Snape was still alive."

"Why wouldn't he? The boy's been living with James Potter for a year, hasn't he?"

"So?"

"So one assumes Potter told him about his real parentage."

The Assistant shrugged. "Kid has a right to keep his family business quiet. Gets enough shit from the media as it is."

"Then why reveal it now?"

Another shrug. "His choice. James is teaching at the school now, maybe Harry decided he didn't want to pretend the man's his father during classes." He lowered the wand and straightened in his seat. "Maybe I ought to send off a message and ask Harry to come over. Hogsmeade weekend, it'd be easy enough to get him up here. How do you think he would react to finding some stranger with his father's wand?"

Another lick of the lips, then: "Call him and find out."

The Assistant leant forwards, planting his elbows on his knees. "Well, now that's interesting."

Smith eyed him warily. "What?"

"You're not afraid of Harry. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, you _want_ him up here."

"The boy won't let you kill me."

The Assistant laughed. "Sure of that, are you? He's got quite the temper to him if you catch him out."

"He wouldn't kill me."

"You don't know what he would do." He leant further forwards. "I'll let you in on a little secret—your life wouldn't be the first he took."

Smith smiled. "Is that right."

"Unfortunately. I'm sure you want to think very well of our famous Boy Who Lived, but he has blood on his hands."

"I've never been one to fawn over celebrities, or believe whatever trash our so called news has to say about them."

"I'm not the _Daily Prophet_."

"Merely a Death Eater."

"Traitor," the Assistant corrected. "Death Eater _traitor_. Not that most people know that, admittedly."

"Still engaging in torture and violence, however."

"Didn't say I was a reformed Death Eater, just a traitor. Besides, you've been desecrating my dear friend's grave; you deserve everything I do."

Smith's brow furrowed at that. "Dear friend?"

"Yes. I was very, very fond of Severus Snape."

Smith stared at him like he'd been presented with an intricate riddle. "Were you in love with him?"

The Assistant sat back with a grimace. "Good god, no."

Smith's lip curled. "Too much a greasy bastard for you? You'd rather just shag paedophiles?"

The Assistant raised his eyebrows. "That's an odd thing to say. I'm somewhat too old to be of interest to paedophiles."

Smith glanced away, jaw clenching. The Assistant smiled.

"You've betrayed yourself. I show revulsion at the thought of romance with Severus Snape, but instead of accusing me of homophobia you accuse me of bad taste. So you know I'm interested in men, but you take it a step further and accuse me of a specific taste, so you know about my relationship with Preston Yaxley—and, more, you know about Preston's particular proclivities. So either you're one of his victims, or you know him in a… shall we say, professional… sense."

"Don't accuse me of shit like that!"

The Assistant hummed. "Not a fellow deviant, then. That was far too much genuine disgust. Still, not necessarily a victim. There are others that know about Preston. Most of them are Death Eaters, though, as are most of the people that know about my relationship with him."

"You said Death Eaters planned to recruit me. They wouldn't if I already was one."

"They came to recruit Herby Smith, not whoever you really are. Could be you're dealing potions on the sly and they don't know about it, in which case you're probably lucky to be dealing with me instead of Voldemort. So which is it: victim or knowledgeable associate?"

Smith didn't answer. He looked around the cave, gaze calculating, searching for anything that would get him out. There was nothing; the Assistant allowed himself luxuries elsewhere, but here he was sparse. This cave was the only place he considered a permanent home, the one place throughout all timelines that was always and forever his, unchanging. He was true to himself here, and that included admitting that he owned nothing permanent. Whatever he brought to this cave would vanish again when his loop reset; it was easier to not have anything to disappear.

Smith evidently realised the hopelessness of his situation because he looked back to the Assistant with a resigned expression.

"Send for Harry."

"Why?"

"You don't think he deserves to know about this?"

The Assistant shrugged. "Might be better off not knowing."

"He'll want to. You'll want him here when the Polyjuice wears off. You might as well send for him now."

"I'd rather find out who you are first, then decide if the kid needs to know."

Smith sighed irritably. "He already knows. Where do you think I got the damned wand?"

"You expect me to believe he gave you his father's wand?"

"Call him here and ask him yourself if you don't believe me."

The Assistant settled back in his chair. "No. You're not the one in charge here. Twenty minutes, then I'll decide whether to summon Harry."

* * *

Harry stayed on the top floor and made himself invisible for twenty minutes, hiding in what probably used to be a storage cupboard. The panic attack he thought he'd avoided hit him twice as hard, his first major attack since the start of term. He sat trembling in the cupboard, unable to control his magic; his fear of getting punished for lashing out at Nott built the panic up until the already cracked concrete and damaged tiles broke apart further, the floor under him splitting up until he could see the steel beams underneath. For the first time in weeks he felt like it would never end.

But it did end, as they always did, and without anyone realising what he'd done. He fixed the damage and curled up in a corner, wishing he could just leave. When he finally saw Nagini slithering about, hissing his name and saying Voldemort wanted him, he was glad for it. As he headed back downstairs, he wondered how Voldemort called for the others in the house when he wanted them. It wasn't like they could understand Nagini's messages.

 _Maybe he ties a note to her neck,_ the voice suggested, and Harry couldn't help sniggering at the thought.

His laughter quickly died when he was halfway down the staircase and met with Bellatrix coming the other way. She had her wand on Fuller, who was being dragged along behind her as if an invisible rope was bound around his ankles.

"Help me!" the man cried to Harry as he went bumping past, but Nott was following them and Harry pressed himself to the wall, gaze down, struggling to keep his magic from lashing out at either of them. He might have dealt with Bellatrix more over the past few months, but she had that same look on her face she got every time she'd visited him and he was just as distressed by her presence as Nott's right then.

"Don't think I won't get you again one day," Nott hissed as he passed, and Harry flinched away from him.

Harry hurried the rest of the way down and on to Voldemort's meeting room. The door swung shut behind him, burying the room in the darkness that always permeated, the heavy curtains pulled shut over the windows. Harry bowed and hoped he wouldn't be asked to do much else before he was dismissed.

"Tell me how you found Preston Yaxley this summer."

Harry hadn't expected that. He resisted the urge to fidget or think about how little effort he'd put into finding the Assistant, even if Voldemort did seem to have given the whole thing up as a lost cause.

"I used a tracking arrow," he said, then at Voldemort's blank stare explained what that was.

"And these arrows work on anyone?"

"If I have their name and they're alive."

"Then find me Herbert Smith."

Harry Wished for a bit of parchment, a quill and the Interactive Ink in his trunk at Hogwarts, and really hoped Herbert Smith wasn't a real person.

To his disappointment, the arrow worked, but rather than turn to one direction and settle, it kept jerking between several different points, stopping for barely a second before twisting to point another direction, the numbers changing at every location.

"I assume," Voldemort said in a dangerous voice, "it is not supposed to do that."

Harry shook his head, still staring down at the arrow. "I've never seen that happen before." He puzzled on it, and then, with some prompting from the voice, said thoughtfully, "It could be because I don't know what he looks like and it's a common name. There's probably more than one Herbert Smith in the world and the arrow is trying to point to them all."

Voldemort made an angry noise and Harry suppressed a flinch.

"Get out of my sight, you're dismissed," Voldemort snarled, and Harry bowed and gladly left.

He returned to Spinner's End, but there was still no sign of Snape. He got rid of his mask, vanished the tracking arrow and made a new one. It told him Snape was 325 miles north north-west.

 _That puts him right around Hogwarts,_ the voice said. _What on earth is your daddy doing there?_

Harry had no idea.

He teleported to the trees by the path from Hogsmeade to Hogwarts, checked the arrow, then took to the air and followed it south to the mountain overlooking the village. Coming at it from the air, he was able to see the odd patch of darkness set into the mountainside. The arrow was pointing straight towards it, but as he approached, an all too familiar figure stepped out of the darkness.

Harry stopped short, floating several feet away as the Assistant looked across the space between them. He was wearing a leather collar around his throat, something Harry had never seen before, and seemed unusually pale. His hand trembled slightly when he lifted it to point at Harry.

"You," he said in a shaky voice, "have some serious explaining to do."

Harry floated down to the ledge and followed the Assistant through the darkness, where it suddenly lightened to reveal a cave, lit by a fire near the middle. On the ground, one hand buried in the stone, was Snape.

Harry made two quick Wishes. The Assistant collapsed, unconscious, and Snape's hand came free. Harry went over to him.

"Are you hurt?"

Snape wriggled his fingers, clenched and unclenched his fist a few times, and bent it at the wrist. "Fine," he said, but he rubbed at his throat and Harry saw the beginnings of a bruise. When he stood, he grimaced.

"Are you sure?" Harry asked worriedly.

"I'm fine. He was just a little rough with me."

"What happened?"

Snape told him, speaking as he went to the Assistant and dug his wand from the man's pocket. After, he said, "I'm guessing you were involved with the set up that was supposed to catch me at Fuller's."

At Harry's surprised look, he gestured at the tracking arrow Harry still hadn't vanished.

"You came looking for me. You must have had reason to be concerned."

"I went with Antonin," Harry confirmed.

"Tell me what happened."

Harry did so. After, Snape dropped into the Assistant's chair with an irritable sigh. "So Fuller's dead, or will be soon enough."

"He didn't do anything wrong. It's not fair that he…"

Snape snorted. "The Dark Lord has never been fair. He was cheated out of me, so he's taking it out on Fuller."

Harry didn't want to think about what was happening to Fuller right this second, so he asked, "What are you going to do now?"

"I'm not sure. I could go to another dealer, but…"

"The same thing would happen again."

"Very likely." His gaze shifted to the unconscious figure on the floor. "The bigger question is what to do about him."

Harry looked over at the Assistant and shrugged. "I was just going to erase his memory and leave it at that."

Snape gave him a considering look. "You don't want revenge for his part in this summer's events?"

Harry frowned at him. "What do you mean? He never tortured me."

"He captured you. He helped capture me."

"Oh. Well, yeah, but he had no choice. Less choice than me, even. He's under that same Animancupium curse as James. And he's betrayed the Dark Lord now. He's spying for Dumbledore."

"I never said you had to kill him," Snape muttered.

"Do _you_ want revenge?" Harry asked.

For a long moment, Snape just stared at the Assistant, apparently undecided, but eventually he sighed and looked away. "I want revenge, but I admit there'd be no satisfaction in taking it out on him. He never hurt me, and he seems inordinately fond of me. He always did seem eager to befriend me."

"I think he wanted to interfere when the Dark Lord told me to kill you," Harry said thoughtfully, remembering the Assistant's behaviour that night. "Maybe he's in love with you."

"I did wonder, but he was viscerally disturbed by the idea when I suggested it."

Harry gaped. "You actually asked him?"

Snape waved at hand at the spot on the floor where he'd been shortly before. "When I was…"

"Oh. I dunno then. I guess he just really liked you, as a friend."

"Perhaps," Snape murmured, then shook himself off. "I should get going, as should you. You'll be missed if you're gone too long, even on a Hogsmeade weekend."

Harry nodded, but didn't move. When Snape turned away to pick up his bag, Harry blurted, "I went to see your mum today."

Snape spun back around. He licked his lips, asked cautiously, "How did it go?"

Harry looked down, twisting the toe of his trainer against the stone floor. "She thought I was you."

"Ah."

"I went along with it. I didn't know how to tell her who I really was. She didn't think I was adult-you, she thought I was teenage-you; she asked me about school and stuff. I thought trying to tell her I was her grandson would only confuse her more."

"It may have," Snape agreed. "What you did was fine." He smiled bitterly then. "I've done the same."

"Pretended to be you?" Harry said, baffled, then realised what he meant. "Oh! Pretended to be your dad? It must've been difficult pretending to be someone you don't like."

"It's not something I relish," Snape agreed dryly. "Are you planning to see her again?"

"I dunno. Maybe. I'm going to pay for her care. I don't care what you say and I'm going to tell your aunt to shove her inheritance some place nasty. I'm doing this for _my_ grandma."

Snape looked amused at his comment about his aunt. "As you wish. I do appreciate the gesture. Let me know how Aunt Geraldine reacts to you telling her to shove off."

Harry nodded. Snape picked up his bag, cast a repairing charm on the strap, and slung it over his body. Harry told him to write to him if he needed Harry's help with anything, Snape said he would, and then he stepped out of the cave and Apparated.

Harry looked down at the Assistant, noticing again the collar around his throat. Had Preston Yaxley put it there? Where was Yaxley these days anyway? Presumably somewhere he couldn't give the Assistant orders. Harry doubted he was back in the Chamber of Secrets; it seemed stupid to take him back there after Harry had found them. Probably he was somewhere even Harry's tracking arrows couldn't find now, but he didn't bother to find out. Yaxley and the Assistant were no longer his to find and turn over.

 _You could,_ the voice suggested. _You could take the Assistant in now and the Dark Lord would reward you greatly._

Harry didn't want rewards from Voldemort, and the Order needed a spy. Besides, he didn't want the Assistant to be killed as brutally as Igor Karkaroff had been.

So he erased the Assistant's memory of Snape, his cover as Herbert Smith, and, just to be safe, everything related to David Fuller. Leaving him unconscious on the floor, Harry left the cave, flying invisible down the side of the mountain then making himself seen again once he was on the ground, walking up the path to the village.

It was lunchtime, but the village wasn't busy. There was a bitter wind and people hurried to their destinations with their heads down and scarves tugged tight around their lower faces. Harry noticed Zonko's Joke Shop was closed down, and wondered if it was because of the war or if it just fell victim to Weasley Wizard Wheezes booming popularity.

One shop that wasn't shut down made him stop short: Dragonthorn Designs, a tattoo shop.

He hadn't lied in the summer when he told the Assistant he wasn't fond of tattoos, but he was even less fond of getting caught out by magic suppression again.

 _We should do it. This is the protection we need._

He couldn't argue with it. He looked up and down the street, then darted forwards while there was no one was looking at him.

It wasn't a very big shop. He entered into a small reception area, a desk to one side, an open door leading into a room Harry assumed was where they did the tattoos, and a bead-covered doorway leading into the back, a sign beside it reading staff only. The walls sported various tattoo designs from simple Celtic swirls to elaborately designed magical creatures, some motionless and some enchanted to move.

A bell above the door rang when he entered, and while he was examining the pictures on the walls a woman came through from the back. She was heavily inked and dressed in robes with the sleeves torn off, and she stopped just in front of the beads, which clicked as they settled down behind her. Harry turned to face her and she eyed him up and down, looking both amused and exasperated, and then she noticed his scar.

"You're Harry Evans."

Harry nodded. The woman frowned, and he tensed.

"When's your birthday?"

Harry hadn't expected that. "July. Why?"

"'Cause the paper in September said you're only sixteen, which means you ain't hit seventeen yet, which means no ink. Not even for the Boy Who Lived."

Harry's shoulders slumped and she gave him an apologetic smile. "Come back on your birthday and we'll see about inking you up, yeah?"

 _Just Wish for them to do it,_ the voice insisted, but Harry didn't. He'd spent enough time hurting people with his magic that he didn't want to use it against people he didn't have to.

 _This doesn't hurt them! It only hurts YOU if you don't protect yourself!_

But Harry shook his head. He'd find another way to do it than forcing people to do what he wanted.

He left Dragonthorn Designs and headed for the Three Broomsticks, stopping briefly just inside the door to relish the warmth and look around. He glimpsed a familiar blond head across the room—Draco, sitting with Crabbe, Goyle, Pansy, and Millicent Bulstrode. Harry went to the bar to order a plate of chips and a butterbeer then started to head over and join the sixth years when a hand tugged on his robe. He looked around to find Tyler with his head tilted back to look up at him.

"Wanna sit with us?" Tyler gestured around him. He sat with a large group of fifth years, clustered about three tables, extra chairs pulled over from others. Cid was not far away, his arm around Jia's shoulders, and Ginny was on the other side of the group with Dean Thomas, the only non-fifth year. Harry glanced back towards Draco's table, but he didn't really fit in with the rest of his new year mates, even six weeks into term. He felt a little awkward sitting with the fifth years, too, but less so, so he pulled up a chair and joined them.

He didn't talk much initially, feeling out of place, but as he drank and ate and listened to everyone chat, catching up on the gossip and laughing at jokes, he gradually relaxed. No one considered him an outlier for being a sixth year, and at one point he and Dean were asked about the OWLs and if they were really as bad as everyone said, until the questioners were pelted with bread rolls.

"No OWL talk in Hogsmeade!"

Harry laughed with the rest, and for a couple of hours managed to forget all his worries and just enjoy his friends' company.

* * *

The Assistant woke abruptly to find Albus Dumbledore bent over him, a wand in his hand and a concerned look on his face.

"Are you quite alright?"

The Assistant looked around then frowned at Dumbledore. "How did you get in here?"

"I walked through the entrance."

"Without getting hexed?"

"Not so much a tickle," Dumbledore confirmed as the Assistant sat up. He rubbed at his head, which ached slightly, and then blinked down at his legs.

"Oi, I'm dressed."

"Should you not be?" Dumbledore asked, faintly amused.

"Well I don't sleep dressed. And it's light out." He peered past Dumbledore and at the sky beyond his cave entrance. "Must be past lunch time, isn't it?"

"Nearly one o'clock," Dumbledore confirmed.

The Assistant touched his neck, although he didn't need to feel it to know he still had Yaxley collared about his throat. There was a small fire burning in the cave and a chair that matched what he usually conjured for temporary seating. Yet the last thing he recalled was settling down to sleep last night, bruised and sore after letting Yaxley have a go at him. He never slept with Yaxley as a collar, needing those hours with him human. Too long with Yaxley as an inanimate object and the Assistant's thoughts would start getting jumbled, but wearing him was the only way to keep him close without the trouble of leaving him human.

"I've been memory charmed," he determined. He let Dumbledore help him to his feet and moved over to his chair, dropping into it as Dumbledore conjured one for himself.

"I believe you were Stunned, too," Dumbledore said. "You wouldn't wake to words or shaking. Can you think who might have attacked you?"

The Assistant had a very good idea, actually, simply because there were very few people that could get the drop on him. In this instance, he would place his bets on Harry. He could also probably undo the memory charm, but he restrained himself. Harry likely had a good reason for doing it, and it might even be something to protect the Assistant. If Harry had been inclined, he could have taken the Assistant to Voldemort and gotten the Assistant killed painfully and slowly, but he hadn't. The Assistant would pay him back by leaving his memory alone, no matter how much he wanted to find out what he'd forgotten.

"A few ideas," he answered Dumbledore. "I'll look into it. It's nothing much to worry about."

Dumbledore looked over his glasses at him. "You were Stunned and memory charmed. You think that's nothing much to worry about?"

"Yup. They didn't hurt me and I've nothing they could have taken off me, so it's nothing to worry about."

"Nothing? I was under the impression you were in possession of some extremely valuable objects."

The Assistant took a moment to realise what he was talking about. "The Horcruxes? Nah, they're good."

"How can you be certain?"

"Because I'm very careful about security."

Actually, if Harry knew Legilimency, he could have found out how to break into the makeshift safe carved into the back of the cave, but if he was good enough to do that, he'd have found out the truth of the Assistant's identity, and the Assistant was certain the kid would stick around if he found out that.

Dumbledore didn't look convinced, so the Assistant rolled his eyes and promised, "I'll check them after we're done here, alright?"

"Very well," Dumbledore agreed, not entirely happily.

"What did you come for anyway?"

"Gabriel Valentine. How well do you know him?"

"Pretty good. He was my master, once. Twice, actually." He paused, thought. "Possibly three times, I can't quite remember."

Dumbledore leant forward, intrigued. "Bound to a vampire? And you remained human?"

"Yeah. It's not that different to being Bound to a human, to be honest. His vampirism doesn't affect me. Being Bound as a vampire, however…"

"You're able to? Despite the change killing a person?"

"As long as my master's a vampire and the change happens as part of the transfer ritual, then yeah."

"How is it different for you? If you'll forgive my curiosity," Dumbledore added. "If you don't wish to discuss it…"

The Assistant waved a dismissive hand. "Nah, it's fine. It's… weird? It's kind of hard to explain if you've never been a vampire or a Slave." He thought for a moment, then asked, "Have you ever been under the vampire seduction?"

Dumbledore leaned back in his chair again, looking away and coughing. "Ah… well, yes."

The Assistant grinned. "Do tell."

"There was, shall we say, an incident when I was much younger… I really don't think it's necessary to get into the details. You were telling me what it's like to be a vampire and Bound?"

The Assistant chuckled, but let it slide. He'd just find out from the next Dumbledore. "It's kind of like being permanently under the seduction, but more intense, and at the same time riding the mellow high of a minor opiate—and you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"

"I'm afraid not," Dumbledore said, not sounding overly disappointed. "I've never dabbled with opiates, nor other drugs."

"Technically, I've never exactly _dabbled_ with them either. Abused would admittedly be the more appropriate word."

"I understand recovering from such substance abuses can be difficult."

The Assistant scratched his chin. "Yeah, I guess. Time travel makes a hell of a detox though."

"Ah, of course, you de-age when your loop resets."

"Yup. Purges me clean of anything I've been taking. Doesn't do anything for the mental aspects of addiction though, I'll admit that. Gotten a bit off topic though. Why were you asking about Gabriel Valentine?"

Dumbledore nodded. "Of course. You mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Voldemort has begun negotiations with him. I've attempted to do the same, but I have to confess I'm having difficulty finding someone willing to act as an envoy."

He paused. The Assistant knew what he wanted to ask, but he'd make Dumbledore say it before he spoke.

"I know you've said you prefer to sit out of anything more than information gathering, however Gabriel Valentine's nest is large. If Voldemort gained his vampires, when he already has the aid of the giants and werewolves… it could mean disaster for this war."

He paused again. The silence was longer this time, but the Assistant wouldn't break it. He was more than capable of out-waiting Dumbledore in his games of patience.

It took Dumbledore over a full minute, but eventually he caved. "Would you mind acting as my liaison in this?"

"Sure."

Dumbledore blinked, then frowned. "You did that on purpose, didn't you?"

The Assistant grinned. "No idea what you're talking about, Albus," he said, and laughed at Dumbledore's disgruntled expression.


	41. Chapter 41

**Chapter 41**

At the end of Defence the following Monday, Sirius asked Harry to stay behind after and said that Dumbledore wanted to see him that evening for another lesson. When Harry arrived at the Headmaster's office after dinner, Dumbledore had two memories to show him. The first was short and they didn't go into it; Dumbledore poured it into the Pensieve and touched it with his wand to make the image of a head float up above it. The head belonged to Caractus Burke, a man who ran a pawn shop and bought Slytherin's locket from Merope Gaunt shortly before she died, drastically under-paying her for the priceless artifact.

"Why'd you show me that, sir?" Harry asked when Dumbledore touched the memory and the head disappeared again.

"Because it is a part of the whole. On the surface it may seem unimportant and trivial to know how Merope scrounged through the last days of her life, but it will all come together in the end."

 _Let's hope so, or he's just wasting our time._

"How'd she die?"

"Childbirth. You'll see more in the next memory."

They went into that one, as they had Bob Ogden's. It was Dumbledore's memory, showing the first time that he had met Tom Riddle, when he'd gone to deliver his Hogwarts letter to the orphanage where Tom grew up.

"I didn't realise teachers delivered the first years' letters themselves," Harry remarked as he walked down a London street after the memory of younger Dumbledore, who had ginger hair and wore a plum coloured suit that Harry had to suppress a laugh at.

"Only for Muggleborn students," real-Dumbledore corrected him, "or half-bloods raised by Muggles, like Tom. Otherwise they would likely think it nothing more than a prank."

They met the orphanage matron first and she told them how Tom Riddle was an odd child with a tendency to bully the other children. He'd been born at the orphanage and Merope had died not much later, after giving the baby his name.

When they finally met Tom himself, Harry couldn't help but wonder if he, Harry, looked quite so manic after his demon deal as Tom did at discovering the existence of magic. He thought he might have because he understood it, that feverish joy at having power at one's fingertips. Even now, after having it for years, there was still something in him that delighted in every new spell he learnt.

Tom demanded proof that Dumbledore was a wizard too, and to Harry's surprise Dumbledore set Tom's wardrobe on fire. Once it was out, there was no damage to the furniture, but Dumbledore had Tom take out a shoebox of stolen objects and made him promise to return them to their rightful owners. He explained a little about Hogwarts and gave him a small amount of money to purchase his supplies, explaining how to access Diagon Alley when Tom said he didn't need Dumbledore to accompany him.

"You will be able to see it," Dumbledore said, "although Muggles around you—non-magical people, that is—will not. Ask for Tom the barman—easy enough to remember, as he shares your name—"

Riddle gave an irritable twitch, as though trying to displace an irksome fly.

"You dislike the name 'Tom'?"

"There are a lot of Toms," muttered Riddle. Then asked, "Was my father a wizard? He was called Tom Riddle too, they've told me."

"I'm afraid I don't know," said Dumbledore, his voice gentle.

Harry and the real Dumbledore returned to the office after that and Harry sat, thinking on what he'd seen, unsettled.

"A knut for your thoughts, Harry?"

He hesitated, uncertain, but then looked up and blurted, "I didn't hate my name. Potter, I mean. I never hated it. I just didn't like who I was. I wanted to be someone else. Not—I didn't want to be… Potter was weak. He got beat up and hated and I didn't want to be that so I thought changing my name would help."

Dumbledore considered him, looking over the top of his glasses with an unreadable expression. "Are you afraid of the similarities in your own life to that of Lord Voldemort?"

"His mum died," Harry said, a hint of desperation in his voice. "His dad didn't want him. He changed his name, he was a Slytherin and a Parselmouth, and he had control over his magic even as a kid."

"You will not become like Lord Voldemort."

"You don't know that," Harry said in a small voice.

"I believe it. The things you listed are nothing more than surface similarities. There are other children with dead mothers and absent fathers, many of whom are, or have been, Slytherins. Magical control even from a young age is not unusual in people of power—I myself could harness my powers to suit my own ends when I was just a child. It does not mean they grow up into Dark Wizards."

"There's still the Parseltongue," Harry pointed out. "That's a dark power."

"No," Dumbledore said gently but firmly, "it is a power commonly associated with dark wizards, but is not, in and of itself, dark. That besides, you'll recall you can speak Parseltongue only because Voldemort can, because of the connection between you."

"It still doesn't prove I won't end up like him. I don't want to."

"Whatever similarities you have to Voldemort, you have a great many differences too. Voldemort, in all his life, has never had nor wanted a friend. You have several very close ones."

"You think my friends will stop me turning into him? Even Draco, when his dad's a Death Eater? You're not worried he's going to turn me to the dark side?"

"I think, were you so easily 'turned to the dark side', you would not have displayed the resilience you did under Voldemort's care this summer," Dumbledore said, and Harry couldn't look him in the eye. "But it is not who your friends are that is important, just the simple fact that you have them. It shows that you are capable of a magic Voldemort is not—love."

"Love isn't magic."

"On the contrary, love is the most powerful magic to ever exist. It's what saved you the night Voldemort came to Godric's Hollow. Love is what makes you a better, more powerful person than Voldemort could ever hope to be."

"What, do you expect me to hug him to death?"

Dumbledore looked startled at the idea then smiled widely. "I do not, although the shock alone might very well kill him. But Harry, you must realise that the ability to love is a powerful, powerful thing."

"I don't see how," Harry said truthfully, "but I guess that's one of those things you know because you're older."

"Perhaps," Dumbledore agreed, and sighed as he glanced towards the window. "It is getting late and you should be going. However, there are a few things I want you to keep in mind from today's lesson. Firstly, Tom's contempt for anything that might connect him to other people; secondly, his highly secretive and self-sufficient nature; and lastly, his propensity for collecting trophies. Bear in mind this magpie-like tendency, for this, particularly, will be important later.

"And now, it really is time for bed."

Harry nodded and stood, heading through the floo back to Sirius and James' rooms. Sirius was there, frowning at a pile of essays he was marking, and eagerly offered to walk Harry down to Slytherin. Harry hardly noted the disappointed look when he refused; he wanted the time alone to think a little.

Dumbledore's assurances hadn't helped much. The similarities between him and the young Voldemort seemed to increase with every memory Dumbledore showed him, and Dumbledore didn't have the added knowledge that Harry was already a murderer and torturer, guilty of crimes that only made him even more like Voldemort.

 _None of those crimes were committed of your free will,_ the voice noted, without spite but without much comfort either. _You're acting under duress and feel an absurd amount of guilt for it, too. I'm sure our lord wouldn't feel even a smidgen of what you do. It almost makes me wish I lived in his head._

"I almost wish you did too," Harry muttered.

 _Liar._

He'd just reached the dungeons when he heard a noise from one of the empty classrooms. His magical eye swivelled towards it, focusing through the wall for the source of the noise, and he stopped short, all thoughts of Voldemort suddenly banished. He felt his mouth drop and his cheeks redden, but he didn't move, didn't take his eye from the sight on the other side of the classroom—Cid and Jia, her perched on the edge of a desk, him standing in front of her, both with their robes hitched up and Cid thrusting himself into Jia.

 _Please stop watching,_ the voice said disgustedly, but Harry didn't. He knew he should, for his friends' privacy if nothing else, but this was the first time since being at Hogwarts that he'd actually witnessed anyone having sex. He'd never spied on the other dorms unless he was looking for someone in particular, and in those instances he'd never seen anyone shagging. When he caught sight of people changing, he would avert his gaze, but this was different. Getting dressed was just getting dressed, but this was _sex_.

 _And absolutely nothing interesting about it,_ the voice insisted, in complete contrast to what Harry's body thought. He shifted uncomfortably and looked around in case anyone was approaching, but everywhere in his range of vision was clear—everywhere expect that one classroom, which he looked back to and kept watching until Cid and Jia were finished. When they started dressing, he hurriedly moved on. He didn't go to the Slytherin common room yet, but darted in an empty classroom of his own and guiltily took care of himself.

 _You,_ the voice said irritably afterwards, _are a pervert._

* * *

Harry had a feeling the voice might be right, but that didn't stop him thinking about Cid, Jia, and sex in general over the following weeks. It wasn't something he ever _really_ thought about before. With Cid as a friend, it was an impossible subject to avoid during the last four years, but aside from a bit of vague curiosity as to how it felt, Harry hadn't lingered on the subject that much. There was always something more important to hold his attention—monsters and convicts and people trying to kill him—and he had a feeling his hormones were less active than other peoples, though it was hard to tell when he was certain Cid was _more_ obsessed with sex than normal.

Not that Harry was about to ask anyone what the typical amount of interest in sex was, but it would be just his luck to be impaired here, too. At least a hormone deficiency might explain why, after another growth spurt, he was still only just hitting five foot six. Draco was at least two inches taller, and most of the boys in their year were likewise taller than Harry. Ron Weasley, damn him, had to be six feet, if not more.

Whatever the case, he found himself thinking about sex now, and not just about watching it. He might have given it some vague consideration before, but he'd never really thought about actually doing it beyond 'it might be nice'. Now he actually imagined doing it, a line of thinking that inevitably made him uncomfortable and once brought on a minor panic attack, but he couldn't help wondering what it'd be like to have proper sex. He wasn't sure he'd have cared if he hadn't been raped, but there was no way of knowing so he tried not to linger on it.

He had to assume that sex done right did feel as good as everyone said, or they wouldn't keep doing it. But what would it be like for him? Could he stand to do it, after what he'd been through? If he could, how would he feel afterwards? Would it somehow make the rape less traumatic? Or more? Would it change anything at all? It wasn't like it was traumatic just because it hurt or because Nott enjoyed it; Bellatrix had enjoyed hurting him, too, in a myriad of non-sexual ways. It had all been traumatic, but something about the rape had an element of violation that the other torture didn't.

Would proper sex, good sex, make that better or worse?

He even looked it up, getting the Room of Requirement to conjure him books on sex so he could figure out how it was meant to be done properly. The Room provided him with a mix of clinical but informative texts, which put his mind at ease, and some rather more shocking manuals on things like position and technique, which made his mind come up with some really interesting dreams at night.

He thought about it for some three weeks, but never said anything about it, even when he and Draco got together in the Room of Requirement again. Even when they advanced to actually touching each other below the waist instead of just rutting together, he didn't bring it up. Part of him was entirely too nervous and embarrassed to talk about it, but part of him just wasn't ready. He needed to get it sorted in his head before he said anything.

On the second Saturday of November, Slytherin played against Gryffindor in the first match of the season. Draco caught the snitch but they still lost by ten points. Draco was furious at the rest of the team; Harry stood outside the changing rooms after, listening to Draco chew them all out. When he finally came storming out, Harry grabbed his hand and pulled him to the castle and up the marble staircase.

"Where are we going?" Draco asked grumpily.

"Somewhere to relax," Harry told him, and said nothing more until they reached the Room of Requirement, which gave them the same firelit room with the circular bed that it'd given them before.

"I'm not in the mood to make out right now," Draco said.

It hadn't been Harry's plan anyway, but the room was relaxing and comfortable. "Just lie with me."

Harry flicked the lock on the door and pulled Draco over to the bed, flopping onto it and pulling him down beside him. Without talking, they arranged themselves until they were both comfy, Draco on his back with Harry on his side, head on Draco's chest and one arm slung across his stomach.

For a long while they lay in quiet. Harry listened to Draco's heart beating beneath his cheek, closed his eyes when Draco's hand came up and started stroking his hair, heard the steady thumping slow as Draco relaxed. The fire bathed them in a gentle warmth and the crackle of the logs burning was a soothing background noise. In that room, it was so easy to just forget about the outside world, to feel like they were the only people who existed, safe and content.

They didn't move until Draco's stomach rumbled. Even then, they remained laying in place, only Draco's hand stilling in Harry's hair.

"We should go," Draco sighed, clearly reluctant. "Must be lunch time."

"I could call a house elf," Harry suggested. "We could eat here."

Draco considered it, then nodded. "I'd like that."

Harry called for an elf—he'd learnt a few names during his brief stay in the castle the summer after his first year—and shortly after they had a picnic spread laid over a table that appeared by the bed precisely for it. They chatted a little as they ate, carefully avoiding all things Quidditch, and by the time they'd both had their fill, Draco's mood was much improved. They lay again to let the food go down, but Draco's hands started to wander, trailing over Harry's abdomen and chest, innocently enough at first until he started filling their silences with kisses.

Before long they gave up talking all together. For the first time, Harry lay on his back with Draco over him as their make out session heated up; before he'd always been on top or they'd both been on their sides. He felt a tiny thrill of fear at it and nearly made them stop, but he forced the emotion down beneath his Occlumency shields and stared up at Draco's face, reminding himself that there was nothing here to fear.

"Alright?" Draco asked quietly, propped up on one elbow while his other hand was spread over Harry's stomach, pushing his t-shirt up. Harry nodded and kissed him, grumbling slightly as he struggled to get past Draco's robes and then giving up.

"Can I vanish these?"

Draco drew back slightly, alarmed. "Vanish them?"

"Not permanently."

"Oh. Alright, I suppose. But if you can't get them back—" the robes vanished, leaving him in only his boxers and an undershirt "—you're paying for new ones."

"Sure," Harry muttered, and tugged him down to kiss him again. He was thinking about Cid and Jia and sex, and _not_ about Nott, and his body was responding appropriately. He had no intention of taking things that far, but he wanted to have Draco against him. He almost vanished his own shirt and jeans, but at the last moment recalled Nott doing it to him, and settled for pulling his shirt off the normal way instead.

Although they'd gone a little further every time they did this in the past few weeks, they hadn't actually been completely naked together yet. Always they had at least left their underwear on. This time they took that extra step, as nerve wracking as it was for Harry. He didn't know whether to be pleased or not that those nerves were as much fear that Draco would find him repulsive to actually look at as it was anything else. It was strange that he could worry what Draco would think of him when they'd already touched each other beneath their underwear, but looking was different.

Draco seemed more than happy with him, though, and Harry's nerves were blown completely out of the water when Draco asked, "Can I blow you?"

Harry, still lying beneath him, felt his eyes go wide and his cheeks go red. "You… you want to…" He couldn't help looking down, then up to Draco's mouth, then to his eyes. "You want to?"

Draco nodded. Harry swallowed thickly. He wasn't afraid of this—this was so far from anything he might be afraid of—but it was so unexpected. He'd wondered about it before, of course he had, but he'd never actually imagined Draco doing it to him until he read those books. Even than he hadn't considered ever asking Draco to, but to have it offered…

"Alright."

He didn't regret it. He hadn't thought he would, but reading about oral sex, hearing other boys say how amazing oral sex was, couldn't prepare him for what it actually felt like. It was so much different, so much _better_ , than Draco's hand.

To his embarrassment and disappointment, it was all over extremely quickly. He was even more embarrassed at failing to warn Draco beforehand—the books he'd read said it was the polite thing to do—but Draco took it in stride, although he did look somewhat unimpressed and was grateful when Harry Wished his face clean.

"I'm really sorry!"

"I'll live," Draco said wryly, moving up to lie beside Harry. "Just warn me next time."

"I will," Harry promised. "I—uh, next time?"

Draco looked suddenly worried. "Unless you didn't like it? I know I'm probably no good."

"No! I mean, yes. I did, of course I did. You were great. I just wasn't sure you'd want to do it again after…"

"I do. The, uh, ending aside, it was fun."

"Really?"

"Uh huh."

Harry wondered if he was refraining from asking 'why don't you give it a try?', except he suddenly noticed Draco wasn't aroused any longer and then felt even more guilty.

"Was it that bad?"

Draco's brow furrowed. "I just said it was good."

"Yeah, but…" Harry gestured down. Draco looked, then squirmed and flushed.

"That's not, um…" He slumped against Harry, hiding his face in Harry's neck, and muttered, "I already came."

Harry blinked. "Oh." Harry hadn't thought that giving oral would be all that enjoyable, but clearly Draco _really_ enjoyed it.

"It's your fault anyway," Draco said.

"How's that?"

Draco pointed to one side and Harry turned his head. Half a dozen pink butterflies were fluttering about across the room. Harry hadn't noticed them, nor been aware of conjuring them. He hadn't accidentally conjured anything in a long time. A year, he realised. Not since the time Draco kissed him in the library. He'd also never conjured pink ones before.

Then he frowned and looked back at Draco. "You get off on butterflies?"

"No!" Draco lightly punched his shoulder, then hugged him tightly. "I get off on knowing I'm making you happy."

Harry didn't know what to say to that, so he just hugged Draco back.

"I love you," Draco's muffled voice said.

"I love you too," Harry said back quietly. "And I'll do you next time, I promise."

"Only if you want to."

"I do," Harry said truthfully. "Actually…"

Draco drew back to look at him curiously. "What is it?"

"I…" He took a deep breath, stared at Draco's chin, and blurted out, "Iwanttohavesex."

Draco blinked.

"Not right now," Harry quickly added, still staring at Draco's chin. "I didn't mean right now. I just meant I… sometime… I want to…"

"You mean that?"

Harry nodded. Draco dropped his head back down again, hiding his face.

"Draco?"

"I'm ready when you are," he whispered.

A heady blend of fear and anticipation hit Harry then. It was one thing for him to decide he wanted to do this thing, and another to say it aloud, but something else entirely to have Draco say he wanted it, too. It made it real. It wasn't just a potential anymore, it was something that they would actually do. He couldn't help the little bit of fear that brought him, but as long as there was a spark of anticipation to go with it then he wouldn't let the fear stop him. If they did this right, then hopefully that fear would go away.

"Harry?" Draco said, muffled voice rumbling against Harry's throat. "Will you come to the Manor for the Christmas holiday?"

The question surprised him. He hadn't thought anything about Christmas; with Sirius and James in the castle, it was a given he'd stay there. He'd also never spent more than a day in Malfoy Manor.

"Will your mother mind?"

"No. Will you?"

"I think I have to ask Sirius, but alright."

He wondered if Draco was already planning for them to have sex sometime during the holiday, and felt that thrill of fear again and a sudden thought that it was all too fast and he wasn't ready. But he reminded himself that there was still five weeks of term left, and as he thought on it, he decided doing it at Malfoy Manor might be better than Hogwarts. They wouldn't have to worry about curfews or interruptions or anything like that.

He didn't ask about it though. They had time to figure it out and he needed that time. He was mentally ready to say he wanted sex, but he wasn't ready to do more than that yet.

It did remind him of one thing he wanted to ask, however.

"Speaking of Christmas, Slughorn's holding a party on the last day of term and we're allowed to bring guests. Will you come with me?"

"Don't think I'm good enough for Slughorn," Draco huffed. He was still bitter about not getting invited to the Slug Club.

"You're good enough for me. Please come, I don't want to go on my own."

Draco grumbled a bit, but acquiesced. "I suppose it's a chance to show him I'm just as worthy of attention as everyone else in that club."

"More so," Harry agreed. "He's just too blind to see it."

Draco didn't say anything, but Harry felt him smile against his neck.

* * *

On the last day of term, Harry and Draco left Slytherin at eight o'clock in the evening and made their way up to Slughorn's office. Slughorn greeted Harry enthusiastically, and even managed a polite greeting to Draco, before dragging him over to meet some author who wanted to write Harry's biography. Harry was more interested in the vampire that was with the author, because he'd never met one before and it was kind of cool, except he looked like he wanted to eat a couple of girls who were at the party.

"I'm really not interested in a biography," Harry told the author, which was true even without the voice's threats on how it would torment him if he even considered publishing a book about it, "and I've just seen a friend of mine, so if you'll excuse me…"

Without giving the man time to argue, Harry grabbed Draco's hand and dragged him over to the drinks table where Tyler stood with his arm around the waist of Rebecca DiCamillo, the Gryffindor prefect from his year.

"Hey, Tyler."

"Hey, Harry," Tyler muttered. He kept glancing warily at the vampire and tugging the collar of his robes over the scar on his neck. He normally didn't worry about showing it; the story of surviving a vampire attack had garnered him an extra level of popularity.

"Hi, I'm Becca," his date introduced herself, smiling broadly at Harry, but ignoring Draco. "It's nice to meet you. We never got chance to hang out much before you moved up a year."

Harry wondered if it was rude to mention that they'd never hung out at all and he'd barely remembered her name, but before he could say anything, Draco put his hand to Harry's back and shifted so he faced Harry.

"Pity," he said with complete insincerity. "Now you never will. Harry, would you care to dance?"

Surprised by Draco's curt attitude, Harry nevertheless agreed and when they were in the middle of the small area of the room that constituted the dance floor, he said, "You shouldn't be mean to Tyler's date."

"I didn't like the way she looked at you, and he shouldn't have brought a Gryffindor."

"Are you getting jealous?" he teased. "Worried I'm going to run off with someone prettier than you?"

"As if. No one's prettier than me."

"That's very true," Harry agreed and laughed when Draco grinned smugly.

Later that evening Draco got into a conversation with Slughorn about his grandfather, who Slughorn apparently attended school with, and Harry's attention drifted from the conversation, letting his magical eye rove around the room. Sirius and James were across the dance floor, James talking animatedly to Professor Trelawney while Sirius tipped something into the glass in her hand, then he noticed Harry watching and gave a cheeky wink. Harry rolled his eyes but smiled slightly, eye moving around to look elsewhere. He saw Hermione dancing with Logan Sparrow, the Head Boy, and raised an eyebrow at her. She just smiled back. He would ask her about it later.

His eye moved on, passed over the wall to his left, and he gasped, jerking and almost spilling his Butterbeer.

"You alright, m'boy?" Slughorn asked.

"Wha– uh, yes. Fine."

Slughorn nodded and continued talking. Draco shot Harry a questioning glance, not missing the slight redness filling Harry's cheeks, but Harry just shook his head slightly, lifting the Butterbeer to his mouth even as his eye, almost against his will, drifted back to the wall, on the other side of which Becca sat on a table, her dress hitched up around her hips, Tyler knelt in front of her with his face buried in her crotch.

"You alright?" Draco asked when his conversation was over and Slughorn moved on, shifting to shield Harry from the rest of the room, his face slightly worried. Harry nodded.

"Are you sure? Is there something on the other side of that wall? You keep looking at it."

"Um," Harry said, cheeks growing hot.

"What is it?"

"Nothing. It doesn't matter."

"It must be something."

"Everything alright here, boys?"

Draco turned, looking at Sirius, who flicked his eyes between the two of them, gaze narrowing slightly as he noticed Harry's red cheeks and refusal to meet his eyes. "Harry?"

"Fine," he said a little hoarsely, then cleared his throat. "Fine," he said again. "Really."

Sirius didn't look convinced. "I don't think we've ever had a discussion about your intentions," he said to Draco.

"Sirius!" Harry hissed, anger overwhelming his embarrassment at what he'd seen. "What the hell?"

Sirius met his gaze steadily. "Look, I've not done anything about this before because who you date is your choice even if I disapprove—"

"Yeah, it is, so you've got no right—"

"But," Sirius said, raising his voice to speak over Harry, then dropping it again to normal tones as he went on, "when I see him getting pushy with you, then I damn well am going to interfere. Maybe I should reconsider giving my permission for you to spend the holidays with him."

"Don't you dare! He wasn't getting pushy with me."

"Sure looked like it."

"Then get your eyes checked," Harry snapped. "Draco's never been pushy with me. He would _never_ do that and you've got no right to say anything about it."

"I'm your godfather, looking out for you is my job."

"Yeah, and you've done such stunning work so far," Harry said, and tried not to feel guilty when Sirius looked like he'd been slapped, actually stepping back from Harry. Harry ignored him, grabbed Draco's hand, and pulled him across the room and out the door. What little interest he had in the party was long gone.

"That was kind of harsh," Draco said quietly. Harry stopped short in the hallway, spinning to face him.

"He was accusing you of…!"

"I know, and I don't appreciate it anymore than you do. My mother raised me better than that. But he is your godfather. You shouldn't get mad at him for trying to look out for you, even if he goes about it the wrong way. After what my father did to his friends…"

"You're not Lucius," Harry bit out. "Sirius won't even give you a chance, all because Lucius is a Death Eater and imprisoned James for all that time? James is the one that should hold a grudge against you, not Sirius. If James can realise you're not your father, why can't Sirius?"

Before Draco could answer, the door of a nearby classroom opened and Tyler and Becca came stumbling out, exchanging sloppy kisses.

"Mmm, you are as good as everyone says," Becca murmured against Tyler's mouth.

"Damn straight," Tyler replied, then noticed Harry and Draco. "Hey, guys. Classroom's free if you want it," he said with a wink, tugging Becca past them and back into the party. Any interest Becca might have had in Harry was long gone, all her attention on Tyler now.

Draco grabbed Harry's hand and pulled him into the classroom. For a moment Harry thought Draco intended them to make out and maybe—he flushed at the thought of doing to Draco what Tyler had been doing—

But Draco just shut the door and turned to Harry with a sigh. "Sirius thinks I take after my father because so many kids do. Don't take this the wrong way, but you didn't have anyone growing up. You got to make your own opinions about the world and everyone in it, without someone telling you their beliefs and expecting you to go along with them. The rest of us listened to what our parents said and just accepted it; we learnt what to think and how to behave from them and most of us didn't meet anyone with opposing beliefs until we came to Hogwarts."

"What's that got to do with Sirius being a prick?"

"I'm saying he expects me to be like my father because most of the kids around us are. All the pro-Death Eater opinions our housemates share didn't come from nowhere. Pansy didn't learn how to be a bully all by herself. _I_ didn't pick up the word Mudblood from thin air."

"You haven't said that in ages," Harry pointed out.

"But I _have_ said it, and meant it. Three years ago you didn't even like me. Can you really blame Sirius for being distrustful of me, too?"

"You were a prick to me and my friends so of course I didn't like you. Sirius has hardly ever met you before this year, and he should know better. He ran out on his family because he disagreed with them. If anyone should understand that children aren't their parents, it should be him."

"Well, maybe," Draco said with a small shrug. "But your comment about not looking after you was still pretty harsh."

Harry looked down, frowning, toeing at the stone. "I'm sixteen," he muttered, unwilling to admit his comment might have been wrong when he was certain his position was right. "I'm a Death Eater. I've spent my whole life looking after myself. I don't need someone else trying to do it for me."

"I don't know about the other stuff, but the age thing doesn't matter. I tried the same thing with my mother and she made it very clear that she'll be looking out for me even when I'm a hundred and sixteen, because that's what parents do. Sirius is the closest thing you've got to a parent; he'll want to look out for you whether you want it or not."

Harry sighed irritably. Draco pulled him into a hug.

"Maybe you should talk to him. Figure things out between the two of you."

"Maybe," Harry sighed, and hugged him tightly, burying his face in Draco's neck. "I don't want to talk about him anymore."

"Alright. So tell me what you saw Lyle and that girl doing."

Harry stiffened. "What?"

"This is the room on the other side of that wall you kept looking at. I'm guessing you saw them fucking?"

Harry felt his cheeks grow hot. "Not exactly. He was…"

"Getting blown?"

"Other way."

Draco chuckled. "And you liked watching that? Some people do, you know, they—" He stopped. Harry pressed his face harder into his neck even as he shifted his hips backwards. "Oh. You, um… you like watching girls get…?"

He didn't sound judgemental, as Harry had feared, so Harry cautiously mumbled, "Not just girls."

"Oh," Draco said again, then: "Do you do that a lot?"

"No!" Harry cried, drawing away from him. "I'm not a pervert. I don't spy on people."

"You spied on Lyle."

Harry stared down at the floor. "It was just then," he muttered. "And one other time."

The prostitutes on the street didn't really count. That had been childish curiosity, not pervy spying, and people who had sex in the street, even in a darkened alley, had to realise there was a potential for being watched.

"What was the other time?" Draco asked curiously.

"I saw Cid and Jia doing it in a classroom, before Hallowe'en."

"That's it?"

"Yes," Harry said firmly. "I don't spy on people."

"So…"

Harry glanced up, attention caught by his tone. Draco studied his nails with careful aloofness, but his cheeks were pink.

"You've never peeked on me masturbating then?"

" _No,_ " Harry said firmly.

Draco dropped his hand, but didn't quite meet Harry's eye as he said, "Would you like to?"

Harry's mouth went dry. "What?"

Draco's cheeks went pinker, but he shifted his gaze to Harry's. "I was just thinking that we could go up to the Room of Requirement and you could watch me…"

There was certainly some appeal to the idea, but… "Won't it be weird? Me just sitting there while you…"

"Not necessarily. Other people do it."

"Really?"

"So I've heard. You wouldn't have to just sit there. You could do it as well."

Harry thought of masturbating in front of Draco and immediately rejected the idea. It would be entirely too embarrassing, which made him admire Draco's offer to do it for him. He must be less embarrassed by it, or maybe he was the opposite of Harry and enjoyed being watched.

"I don't think I could do that."

"Alright." A pause, then: "Do you want to watch me though?"

Harry thought about it. It still felt kind of weird. He would feel more like a pervert just sitting and watching Draco, but at the same time he was definitely interested in seeing Draco masturbate.

An idea came to him. "Can we pretend I'm not?"

Draco frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I'd feel weird just sitting in the Room and watching you, but if we went back to Slytherin and went to bed—our own beds…"

"You'd like that?"

Harry looked away, but nodded.

"Alright," Draco said, and Harry looked back to him, wide-eyed, "but afterwards, can I get in your bed and jerk you off?"

"S-sure," Harry said, and only then considered that their roommates might still be awake and would see Draco get into Harry's bed, but a few Wishes would take care of that.

Draco grinned and stepped up to him, ducking his head for a long, deep kiss.

"Let's go then," he murmured against Harry's mouth, and Harry could only nod and follow him out.

* * *

Harry didn't see Sirius the next morning, but as he was waiting with the rest of the students going home for the winter break, James stalked up to him, grabbed his arm, and hauled him aside. His expression was unusually angry as he pushed Harry against the wall and faced him down.

"I don't know what you said to Sirius last night," he said in a quiet, angry voice, "but when you get back you'd better fucking apologise to him."

Draco's comments last night and time to reflect on them had left Harry feeling guilty enough that he already planned to, but at getting confronted like this, his guilt was overwhelmed by a somewhat childish rebellion at being told what to do.

"Or what?" he snapped. "You're not my father, you can't tell me what to do."

James looked down at him coolly. "I am your teacher, and I can put you in detention for impertinence."

"I was rude to my godfather, not my Defence teacher. You can't give me a detention for that."

"I would," James hissed. "He spent all last night as Padfoot and he hasn't been this miserable since Remus died. I don't care how entitled you think you are just because you're more powerful than us, you need to learn some respect. He's your godfather, stop treating him like shit when he's trying his best to look after you."

Harry might have made a comment about Sirius' best not being good enough if James hadn't mentioned Remus. He still knew that was his fault, no matter what anyone else said, and bringing him up right now made him feel sick with guilt.

James jabbed a finger in Harry's chest. "You apologise to him the night you get back, or it's detention for a week."

He didn't wait for a response, just spun on his heel and stalked away.

"What was that?" Draco asked when Harry returned to him.

"Nothing," Harry muttered, and grabbed his luggage to push forwards through the crowd before Draco could ask more.

His Mark burned later that evening. He was in the drawing room of Malfoy Manor, working on Nyneve's journal while Draco and Narcissa played chess. He'd gotten the hang of the Old English and his Latin was getting good so his translation was coming along nicely. Nyneve had met Merlin for the first time and developed something of a crush, and her theories on death magic were expanding.

He was disappointed to have to stop his work right then, and awkward about interrupting Draco and Narcissa to say, "I'm sorry, I, um… need to be excused for a while."

They looked over, Draco frowning and Narcissa's mouth tightening slightly.

"What for?" Draco asked. "Are you alright?"

"Yes, I just…" He trailed off, but touched his left arm. Understanding dawned on both their faces.

"Of course," Narcissa said, turning her attention back to the chessboard. "I'll set the gates so you can enter without knocking when you return."

"Thank you."

He tidied his bits on the table he'd been using then stood and walked out. Narcissa must know something of his powers, but he still felt uncomfortable using it in front of her so he conjured his mask and transfigured his robes to plain black once he was out in the entry hall. He couldn't teleport from inside the house, but before he could leave the house Draco came hurrying out the drawing room, grabbing Harry's wrist and pulling him close to kiss him.

"Be safe," he murmured against Harry's mouth.

"I'll try," Harry said, because he couldn't make a promise like that when he was going to Voldemort.

He left, quickly made the walk down the drive, and teleported once he was on the street.

Voldemort was in a bad mood when Harry arrived. A week ago Aurors stopped him from killing a French witch called Adrienne De Sauveterre, who was in the country to begin negotiations with the Ministry about lending their Aurors to Britain to help in the war. Despite the assassination attempt, the negotiations weren't put off, but De Sauveterre was being housed in the only all-wizard apartment building in Britain, on the top floor. Voldemort wanted Harry to go there, sneak up to De Sauveterre's flat, and kill her.

"Alone?" Harry asked.

"You have proven yourself, Harry, and this mission requires stealth. Taking Lucius or Antonin will only make it harder. I expect to hear from you shortly. Do not disappoint me."

"Yes, my lord," Harry murmured.

He got the address of the building and teleported away. It was hardly necessary for him to go—he could just as easily kill her from a distance—but he didn't think Voldemort knew that and Harry wasn't about to reveal it if so.

He went inside and made his way up to the top floor, just for the sake of things, slipping by a few other tenants and easing through the stairwell doors only when they were empty on the other side. Figuring out which was De Sauveterre's apartment was easy enough—two Aurors sat outside the door, smokeless cigarettes between their lips as they played poker on the floor. Harry did nothing with them, just got close enough to see through the walls and seek out De Sauveterre. She was brushing her teeth in the bathroom, but with a Wish she slumped lifelessly to the floor.

He headed back down to the street and teleported back to the hospital. To his horror, Nott was in the meeting room with Voldemort. Harry stopped just inside the room, looking between them tensely, preparing to attack or flee, but when Voldemort's gaze narrowed he reluctantly moved forward and dropped to his knee in front of him.

"Is she dead?"

"Yes, my lord."

"Stand up, Harry."

Harry rose, still hyper aware of Nott standing just a few feet to his right.

"Where were you two days ago?"

That startled him, but he answered honestly, "At Hogwarts."

"Satisfied, Frederick?"

"My lord, he could easily have left a duplicate of himself," Nott objected. "His freakish powers—"

" _Crucio!_ "

Harry jumped then stared in shock as Nott collapsed to the floor, screaming. Voldemort didn't hold the curse for long and when he was done he spoke harshly to Nott.

"I am not here to deal with your petty squabbles, Frederick. You've given any number of people reason to take your manhood; I will not have my time wasted with you trying to discredit my people."

"Yes, my lord," Nott rasped.

"You're dismissed, both of you."

Harry didn't hesitate to leave, but rather than go to Malfoy Manor, he teleported to Spinner's End. Snape was sat on the floor amidst a pile of books, a coffee cup in one hand and a quill in the other. He looked up at Harry, watching him remove his Death Eater mask and Wish it away.

"Someone attacked Nott," Harry said by way of greeting. He couldn't sit down; the sofa and armchair were both covered with books.

"Did they?"

Harry nodded. "He, um… lost his manhood. That's what the Dark Lord said."

"That's a very politic way to put it," Snape noted.

"Nott accused me."

"In front of the Dark Lord?"

"To him. I got back and he was there and the Dark Lord asked where I was two days ago. Nott said I could have been lying about being in Hogwarts and the Dark Lord tortured him for wasting his time."

"That's no surprise. Nott's been a Death Eater long enough to have realised that would happen. But I assume the Dark Lord doesn't believe it was you?"

Harry nodded. "Was it you?"

"Yes," Snape answered calmly. When Harry looked surprised at the brazen answer, he added, "I was not going to let what that man did to us go unpunished."

"I'd have just killed him," Harry said quietly. "If I could get away with it."

Snape looked down at the books spread out around him and a nasty little smile curled his mouth. Harry started to ask what was so funny then stopped and asked suspiciously, "Did you poison him?"

"Yes I did," Snape said, sounding terribly smug. "Assuming my calculations on the poison are correct, and they usually are, he should be dead by Easter, but he's my first human test subject so I can't be certain how long it will take his internal organs to decay compared to the rats. It's just a pity I can't get to Bellatrix as well."

Harry leant against a bookcase, trying to figure out he felt about this revelation. It was one thing to want Nott dead, but another to know it was actually going to happen, and to know that Snape had done it. He knew Snape had killed before, but it was different to actually know someone he'd killed.

He shook himself out of his thoughts, and glanced over Snape's books, suddenly realised that they were all on a single subject.

"You're reading about demons." It was half a statement, half a question. He swallowed thickly and asked hesitantly, "Have you… have you found…?"

Snape's gaze was fixed down and he took a swig of his coffee. "Not yet," he said with obvious regret. Harry tried not to feel too disappointed. He'd looked for several years after all; he couldn't expect Snape to find something in a matter of months.

He swallowed again, nodded. "I should head off, get back before Draco starts worrying. I'm staying at Malfoy Manor for the holiday."

Snape finally looked up, raising an eyebrow as Harry straightened up to leave. "Is that wise? Staying at the Malfoys?"

Harry rolled his eyes. "You sound like Sirius," he said, and teleported away before Snape could see him grin at the man's look of horror.


	42. Chapter 42

**Chapter 42**

"This De Sauveterre's a lucky woman," Draco remarked the next morning, and Harry choked on his juice.

"W-w-what?" he stuttered between coughs.

"Adrienne De Sauveterre," Draco said, peering over his paper at Harry. "It says here she's survived two assassination attempts. Are you alright?"

"T-two?"

Draco narrowed his gaze. "Apparently she was nearly killed flooing in from France a week ago, now it says that last night some Auror being used as a decoy to try and catch the one responsible for the first attempt was killed." He stopped, looked like he was bracing himself to speak again, eventually opened his mouth and said, "Did—"

Harry's mark burned. His arm jerked and Draco's eyes went wide. Harry stood up abruptly "I have to go," he said, avoiding both Draco and Narcissa's gaze as he hurried out.

Half an hour later he was back after a round of Cruciatus and a seizure. Voldemort didn't care that it wasn't Harry's fault the woman he killed was a decoy; he was angry and Harry paid the price.

He had his own room for his stay at Malfoy Manor, but that morning he lay in Draco's bed, nestled against Draco's side and half-dozing as fingers combed through his hair. For over an hour they just lay like that, Harry unwilling to move and set off more trembling aftershocks of pain, glad for Draco's quiet, comforting presence. He didn't ask about what Harry had done and the punishment he suffered for it.

Eventually Harry's bladder forced him to get up, however. When he came back from the bathroom, he eased himself back onto the bed with a small wince. Draco watched him worriedly.

"Are you…?"

"I'm… I will be fine," Harry said, smiling to reassure him. Draco looked uncertain, but didn't push it. When Harry lay back, Draco lay alongside him, propping his head up on one hand and letting the other rest on Harry's chest, and for a little while they just lay like that until Harry shut his eyes, and Draco spoke quietly.

"I was thinking about Christmas."

"What about it?"

"Well, I thought… if you were up for it, if you wanted…"

Harry opened his eyes. Draco's cheeks were pink and his gaze fixed firmly on the hand on Harry's chest, but he seemed to feel Harry's gaze on him because he took a deep breath and said, "I was thinking that we could have sex that night."

As always when he thought of that, Harry felt that little spark of fear. It was bigger than usual, and he wasn't sure if it was because Draco was actually talking about a definite plan or just because he'd been in the same room as Frederick Nott twelve hours ago.

He pushed it away. He wanted to do this despite that fear. He wouldn't let it stop him.

"Okay."

Draco snapped his eyes up to meet Harry's. "Really?"

Harry nodded.

"You don't look certain."

"I am," Harry said quickly, realised he sounded defensive, said again, "I am. It's just… it's a bit… scary."

"You know I'll never hurt you."

"I know."

Draco looked at him a moment, then nodded and shifted his gaze down again. "We should… decide what we want to do."

"What do you mean?"

"Well." He paused, tapped his fingers against Harry's chest. "Do you want me to… to fuck you… or do you want to do me?"

Harry hadn't actually considered doing it to Draco, being so worried about what it would be like for himself. He thought about it, but it didn't appeal to him any more than the other way. Given that part of his reason for doing this was to see what it was like to be on the receiving end of good sex, it would defy the point for him fuck Draco. Maybe if this went well, then they could try it that way another time.

"I want you to fuck me. If that's okay."

Draco nodded.

"We'll, um," Harry said, then rolled onto his side and put his back to Draco. Draco put his arm over him and spooned against his back, and Harry forced himself to continue speaking. "We'll need, y'know… um… lube."

He whispered that last word, feeling stupidly embarrassed even though he knew it was necessary.

 _How do you plan to do this if you can't even talk about it?_ the voice asked, and Harry silently told it to shut up. He would do it because he wanted to, needed to. Besides, doing it might be nerve-wracking, but talking about was embarrassing.

Draco's arm tightened around him, then his muffled voice said against Harry's hair, "I already have some."

Harry wasn't sure how to react to that. "Oh."

"I just wanted to be prepared," Draco said. "So I picked some up in Hogsmeade."

"Where do you buy that from?" Harry asked, genuinely curious.

Draco cleared his throat embarrassedly. "There's a store down past Madam Puddifoot's that sells that kind of stuff."

Harry considered asking exactly what kind of stuff, but decided he didn't want to know. At least he wouldn't have to buy any. If he did, he'd probably revert to old thieving habits rather than face a cashier.

"So… I guess that's it?" he said. "We're ready?"

"Yeah, I think so."

Harry nodded and settled against him, trying not to think about how the whole thing could go terribly wrong.

* * *

On Christmas eve night, Harry told Draco he was being summoned. He tried not to feel guilty as Draco pulled him in for a kiss and worriedly watched him leave. Outside the manor, Harry teleported to Spinner's End, where he found Snape with a book and a glass of wine.

"Not vodka today?" Harry said.

"I felt like wine. Is there a reason you're here?"

Harry cleared his throat and looked around, feeling awkward. "I just thought… it's Christmas Eve… I didn't know if… maybe you wanted… company."

There was a moment's silence in which Harry wondered just how stupid this whole idea was. He hadn't bought a present and he felt a bit bad about it, knowing Snape would get nothing, but he hadn't been able to find anything he thought Snape would like. As it was, he wasn't sure Snape cared about Christmas at all; he hadn't done anything to decorate his house, not even a single strand of tinsel strung across a bookcase.

"That's thoughtful of you," Snape said eventually, sounding just as awkward as Harry felt. "It's not necessary however. I'm sure you would rather be with Draco."

That was true, but Harry knew it would be rude to say as much, so he settled instead for, "I didn't want you… I mean, I…"

"I am perfectly content on my own, Harry."

"You've been alone for months," Harry pointed out, not hiding his scepticism.

"I've eaten out, visited the apothecary and bookstores. That's enough socialisation for me."

"That's socialisation?"

"I'm around people, aren't I? I even spoke to waiters and store owners."

Harry just shook his head. "Well, I have to stay for a little while. I told Draco I'd been summoned."

Snape raised an eyebrow, the side of his mouth quirking ever so slightly. "You used the Dark Lord as an alibi for visiting me?"

Harry shrugged. Snape closed his book.

"Very well. Let me test your Occlumency to make sure you haven't been slipping, then you can tell me how things are going at the school."

Harry agreed. Half an hour later he sat opposite Snape with a small glass of wine for himself. It was a lot more preferable to vodka, and to the cheap beers he'd got drunk on at that rave all those years ago. Snape had finished his own glass and was frowning over what he'd heard.

"I thought Dumbledore planned to teach you something more useful than the Dark Lord's history. I understand the concept of knowing your enemy, but I fail to see the worth of a few trips through a Pensieve."

"I think maybe he's building up to something," Harry said. "He told me to remember about how the Dark Lord liked to collect things when he was a kid, like that was really important."

Snape considered that, tapping a finger against his mouth, and then sighed. "Albus will explain himself eventually, one hopes. Typical of the old coot, of course. I certainly don't miss that."

"What do you miss?" Harry asked curiously.

"Very little. Mostly the freedom to walk about without disguise, just for the simplicity of it."

Harry couldn't understand that, always relishing those times when he could go about anonymously, but he hadn't had to rely on Polyjuice Potion to disguise himself.

"Next time I have a lesson with Dumbledore, I'll tell him to hurry up with the war," Harry said, not really joking. "Then you can reveal yourself and go back to living normally."

"Actually," Snape said slowly, "I intend to leave the country when the war is over."

Harry stared at him. "What?"

"I miss the freedom of being me, but I have no great desire to return to my life as it was before. I taught because it put me at Dumbledore's side; I always intended to quit once the Dark Lord was well and truly dead, assuming I survived."

"But leave the country?"

"Why not? I would rather move elsewhere and start a new life, one not overshadowed by my past. Let everyone else continue to believe I'm dead."

"But… but what about…"

Snape raised an eyebrow. "What about what?"

"Friends?"

"What friends?"

Harry sought to find one, eventually said, "Professor McGonagall?"

"She was perhaps the closest I had," he conceded. "But we weren't so close that I am deeply inclined to renew our friendship."

"What about your mother?"

"The one who doesn't remember me even when I'm right in front of her?"

That was a good point.

"The only thing here for me is you, and you can easily visit me wherever I am, if you're so inclined."

 _Not that you'll be alive to do so,_ the voice murmured, and Harry stopped arguing then. Maybe that was really the whole reason Snape would leave and start over, to get away from the memories of Harry.

He gulped down the last of his wine, banished the glass to the kitchen, and stood. "I should go. I'll see you… I'll see you."

Snape nodded, not bothering with a verbal goodbye, and Harry teleported away.

* * *

Twenty-four hours later, Harry stood in Draco's bedroom, stripped to the waist, nestled between Draco's legs while Draco perched on the edge of his bed. There was a shiny blue bottle on the bedside table and the door was charmed locked and the room soundproofed. Draco had his hands on Harry's hips, thumbs rubbing little circles, and Harry had his arms loosely wrapped around Draco's neck. He was shaking slightly.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Draco asked. "We don't have to if you're not ready."

"I do," Harry said. "I'm just a bit nervous."

"If you want to stop—"

"I'll tell you," Harry interrupted. "I want to do this, I do, it's just a bit nerve-wracking, okay? Don't keep asking though, it doesn't help."

"Sorry," Draco murmured, leaning in to press featherlight kisses to Harry's jaw. Harry forced himself not to think about what they were going to do and just focused on the kisses and Draco's soft hands running over him. They'd done this much before, it was nothing to worry about. He could do it—he _liked_ it; Draco's hands and kisses and the thought of what they must look like and how much hotter it would be when they actually did it…

It almost worked. He was doing fine, even when they were both completely naked and Draco was on top of him, but when Draco stopped to reach for the bottle beside the bed, Harry started to roll over onto his front, and then stopped, sitting up.

"I can't do it."

Draco sat back on his heels, bottle in hand. Harry didn't look at him.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Draco's voice was quiet and not obviously angry, but Harry was certain he was disappointed at the very least. "If you're not ready, then you're not ready. I won't make you."

Harry stared down at the bed cover, disappointed and angry at himself. He did want to do this and he'd thought he was ready for it. It was just the thought of laying under Draco… even though he knew Draco wouldn't hurt him, was nothing like Nott, he couldn't help being afraid of that.

"Harry?" Draco shifted closer and put a hand on his shoulder. Harry turned his head away. "Harry, I won't make you, I promise. But can I ask… what's the actual problem? You seem more upset about it than I am. Not that you shouldn't be," he added hurriedly. "I didn't mean that. Obviously, you have… I mean, it's…" He stopped, sighed, tried again. "I was just thinking that if it's something specific, then maybe it's something we can figure out and work around. But if it's not, if it's the whole thing, then we can leave it."

Harry considered saying leave it, because he was embarrassed and irritated and his arousal was quickly waning, but stopping would mean giving up. It would mean Nott won. If there was a way to do this, if there was something they could do to make this easier, then he wanted to try.

"It is… something specific."

"Okay," Draco said, sounding hopeful. "What is it?"

Harry squirmed a little. "I'm—I don't… I don't like being on the bottom."

"Oh," Draco said, sounding a little surprised. "That's all?"

Harry glanced up. "That's all?"

"Well, I mean, you can just go on top. That's easy enough."

"But I want you to do me. I don't want to do you. I mean, maybe another time, but not right now."

"No, I know, but you can still be on top. I'll lay on my back and you can…" He trailed off, but made a gesture with his hands that got the point across. "You'll be more in control that way, as well. I'm sure that'll be better for you."

"I am? How?"

Draco made vague gestures with his hands. "You have to… y'know. You're coming down. On me. You have to guide yourself, can go as slow or fast as you want. I won't… uh… I won't just push up."

Harry thought about that, imagined doing it. There was definitely an appeal in being the one in control, and it would be nothing like when he was raped, so hopefully it would be easier. At the very least, he was willing to try.

"Okay," he said, and Draco grinned.

They built up to it again, taking a little while to rebuild their diminished arousal and get back in the mood. Things got awkward when the moment finally came, with more than a little fumbling and a few accidents with the lube, but eventually they got there. Harry almost had to stop at the last moment, but he stared at Draco's face, battled back the panic threatening him, and forced himself to keep going.

And then the worst of it was over and he could just enjoy it, because it was so much different to what had happened to him before. It was awkward as they tried to find a rhythm, and Draco farted which made Harry burst into laughter, and it was not the smooth and raunchy easy sex that everyone else seemed to talk about.

But it felt good, and it was with Draco, and Harry thought he could understand why people liked it so much.

"You alright?" Draco asked afterwards, when they were cleaned up and cuddling together.

"Yeah," Harry murmured against his throat. He felt pleasantly sleepy. "It was good."

"You're shaking."

"Am I?" He wriggled back enough to lift a hand and look at it, realising Draco was right. He smiled wanly. "Just relief, I guess. I'm okay, really. I enjoyed it."

"Enough to do it again?"

Harry looked at him, startled. "Right now?"

Draco laughed. "No, not right now. But sometime."

"Alright," Harry said, snuggling close again. "Yeah, I'd like that."

* * *

'Again' happened a week later, on New Years Eve. Or at least, it started to. They were planning for Harry to do Draco this time, but just as things were getting heated up, a completely different kind of heat seared through Harry's arm. He jerked up from kissing Draco, fist clenching.

Draco propped himself up on his elbows. "What's wrong?"

Harry touched his left forearm.

"Seriously?"

Harry nodded.

Draco dropped back. "He has the worst timing."

"I'm sorry."

Draco sighed, putting an arm over his face. "It's fine. Not your fault. You should go."

Harry bit his lip. He thought about saying they could start again when he got back, but he doubted he'd be in the mood after a visit to Voldemort.

"I'm sorry," he said again, and climbed off the bed, pulling his clothes back on and hurrying out.

But troubles with Draco slipped from his mind when he arrived at the hospital and Voldemort said, "I need you to accompany us on a diplomatic engagement, Harry."

"Us?" Harry repeated. Lucius, Antonin, and Bellatrix were there, as were four unmasked people—two men and two women—Harry had never seen before, but 'us' implied Voldemort intended to go with them, something Harry never even heard of him doing before.

"I am meeting with Gabriel Valentine," Voldemort said, and Harry couldn't help a little gasp. Gabriel Valentine was supposed to be the oldest vampire in Britain, associated with more than a dozen notable events in history and theorised to be involved in more. The idea of meeting such a historically famous figure made Harry positively giddy.

"He insists on speaking with me directly, as if such a creature has the right," Voldemort sneered. "Unfortunately he commands the largest vampire nest in Britain and many others follow his lead, so I am forced to debase myself by dealing with him."

There was a little murmur of sympathy from the others. Voldemort ignored it.

"We are going to Lynott Manor in South Arlett, Nottinghamshire. You will not need masks."

They removed them and followed him out. When they arrived in South Arlett, it was on a dark country road. On one side was a grass verge and a ditch before some hedges boarding a field, and the other was a huge sprawling manor house, even larger than Malfoy Manor. It was set far back from the road, the grounds around it encircled by a tall brick wall, into which was set a pair of very solid metal gates. There were no curlicues and points here, just three-inch thick bars and protective enchantments so heavy they tingled across Harry's skin when the gates whirred open to admit them. The group walked up a long, wide driveway, open grass on either side of them, and entered the manor's front door, where a butler bowed them in and led them to a throne room.

Harry couldn't help stopping briefly at the entrance, looking around wide-eyed. The room was packed with vampires, all standing or sitting on either side of the room, watching the guests enter. An aisle between them led to a throne, on which sat a man who had to be Gabriel Valentine. Harry had seen a few artist renditions in history books—a fourteenth century design of him at a massacre, an eighteenth century painting of him in noble attire, a modern sketch of him in Ancient Roman battle armour—but none of them did justice to the man. Harry wasn't sure any artist could truly capture the aura of the man in front of him.

"Lord Valentine," the butler said loudly, "may I announce the mortal Dark Lord and his associates."

Voldemort swept up the aisle between the vampires, head held high, showing none of the disdain he felt for the creatures around him. The Death Eaters followed. Lucius' expression was carefully set in haughty arrogance, and Harry wondered if he was hiding fear or distaste. Bellatrix took no pains to hide her sneers from the vampires around her. Antonin was trying and almost succeeding at hiding his fear, but Harry wasn't sure he managed quite so well. The four strangers gave no reaction at all, just meekly followed them towards the throne.

Gabriel was dressed in a navy three-piece suit, but the jacket hung on the arm of a vampire standing just behind his throne. He watched them come with an elbow on the arm of his throne, chin propped on his fist, mouth curled in a faint smile. His eyes were the bluest Harry had ever seen and when they moved over the group and landed on Harry, he thought he might drown in them. Abruptly, all his fear vanished. He felt drawn to Gabriel, enamoured by him. Not in any sexual or romantic way, just that he would be quite happy to kneel at Gabriel's feet and swear loyalty to him with more sincerity than he ever gave Voldemort.

 _Vampire seduction,_ the voice murmured, but it didn't sound concerned. _Vampires who were wizards can give off seductive auras. The older the vampire, the stronger the aura._

Harry just hummed an agreement, eyes never leaving Gabriel even when the group of humans came to stop before him. Harry thought they should bow, but none of the others did so he remained upright.

Voldemort gestured lazily at the four strangers they brought. "A gift," he said to Gabriel, who stood up gracefully from his throne. Harry was vaguely aware of Antonin shifting slightly as Gabriel moved forwards, but Harry felt no such trepidation. If anything, he was disappointed when Gabriel passed him without even a glance, moving to the four people and inspecting them. He sniffed each one and at the last he lifted her wrist and bit down on it. The woman gave a tiny whimper, but otherwise didn't react.

Gabriel fed only briefly, licked over the wounds after, and dropped the woman's arm. "Bland," he said in a voice like honey that Harry could listen to all day, "but they will suffice. Remove the enchantments on them."

Lucius and Bellatrix drew their wands and made a short gesture. Fear suddenly flooded over the faces of the 'gifts', and Harry realised they'd been under the Imperius Curse. Before they could do anything, however, Gabriel raised his hand in a gesture and several vampires moved forwards, took the humans, and drew them into the crowd, where they vanished from sight without a word.

"My nest thanks you," Gabriel said to Voldemort, moving forward again and coming behind Harry. "However, I request something more than weak mortals."

His hands landed on Harry's shoulders. He stood more than a head taller than Harry and was considerably broader; even without a vampire's strength he could probably crush Harry like a bug. Yet Harry still felt no fear and had to fight the urge to lean into the man.

Voldemort watched, red eyes as unreadable as always. "You wish a taste of the boy?"

"I do. He has power."

"A taste. Nothing more."

"Of course," Gabriel murmured.

He turned Harry to face him. Harry lifted his face, turned his head aside, and didn't even think to fight as Gabriel lowered his own head and bit him. It only hurt for a moment, then it was just a pressure on his neck. He sighed softly, leaning into Gabriel as an arm slid around his back and a hand gripped his chin, shifting the angle of his head ever so slightly. Harry let his eyes close, feeling he could happily die like this. It certainly beat getting torn to shreds by hellhounds.

Distantly, he heard an angry yell and a scuffling noise, but Gabriel stopped feeding then and Harry's focus fixed entirely on his tongue running over the bite and a sigh of breath against his neck.

"Exquisite."

Gabriel finally pulled back, letting Harry go. He withdrew a cream handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to him. "For your throat," he said, and only when Harry pressed it to the bite did he move away and return to his throne.

"Very well," he said, tone all business now. "Let us talk terms."

Harry only half listened as Voldemort and Gabriel argued over what each side was willing to give in exchange for help from the other. Voldemort wanted vampire soldiers, creatures he could use to terrorise the people with. Gabriel wanted aid in a secret battle he was apparently fighting against a rival nest, wizards who could help him fight during daylight hours. There was also the issue of what Voldemort's cause could do for vampires as a species—the greater rights he could get them once the war was over.

Then there was Harry himself.

"I want him," Gabriel said bluntly. He'd left his throne again during the talks and now stood by Harry once more. "I want him for my nest."

"Harry is too important to my ranks," Voldemort countered.

"I can imagine." Gabriel's hand came up, brushing through Harry's hair and tilting his head back slightly, baring his scar. "The Boy Who Lived, serving you? Few would have imagined."

"Fewer would believe," Voldemort said. Gabriel smiled.

"I wonder at that. The public can be so easily swayed by a few unpleasant rumours."

"What power he has would be lost as a vampire. He would be useless to you."

"Don't underestimate the powers we wield," Gabriel said softly. "We may not be magicians like you mortals, but we have power. You know that or you wouldn't be knocking at my door."

Voldemort said nothing. Gabriel looked at Harry, curled his hand briefly around the back of his head and then withdrew his hand. "But I wouldn't turn him yet. When he's older, perhaps. For now, as you say, he's much more useful to me as he is."

"So you understand why I cannot give him up."

"Surely there's a bargain to be struck here? Shared custody, perhaps? I am fighting a war of my own, Dark Lord," he added in a less forgiving tone when Voldemort said nothing. "One with rather more casualties to my people than you suffer. Your opponent merely arrests; and rarely, if the reports I hear are to be believed. Mine will cut down everyone that stands between us in her attempts to kill me."

"Harry's worth to me—"

"Can be ruined."

There was a sudden, heavy silence. Gabriel came behind Harry again, hands landing heavily on his shoulders and sliding around until he could link his fingers across Harry's collar.

Voldemort broke the silence. "You dare to threaten my people?"

"Threaten? No. Certainly I could completely break his mind if I were so inclined. It would not be the first. But we both swore to a peace for negotiations, so I would not harm him. He will leave here with you just as the rest of your entourage will. But his loyalty? That will be forever in question."

"Harry is sworn to me. He knows the consequences of betraying me."

"Your threats won't stand up to my seduction, I assure you of that. You might have a strange resilience to me, but Harry here is already very much enamoured, and your others…"

He looked around. Lucius, Bellatrix, and Antonin stiffened, but as Gabriel's gaze passed over each of them, they relaxed and then dropped to their knees, bowing their heads to him.

Gabriel looked back at Voldemort, whose fury was great enough to show on even his face. "I can turn every one of your people, if I'm so inclined."

"You're threatening our peace agreement."

"I'm making a point," Gabriel said. "All I ask is for the use of young Harry. His power is far too great for me to overlook it. There must be terms we can agree on for this."

Voldemort didn't answer immediately, but he was thinking about it. While he did, the butler from earlier came through the crowd to approach Gabriel, leaning to speak in his ear so softly that even Harry, so close to them, couldn't hear it. Whatever the butler said made Gabriel snap his head around, arms tightening about Harry's shoulders.

"How?" he demanded, tone much angrier than it had been before. Voldemort's gaze narrowed.

"I don't know, my lord," the butler said apologetically. "But he has her, bound and powerless."

"Bring them in."

The butler bowed and retreated.

"What is this, Valentine?" Voldemort asked.

Gabriel barely glanced at him, most of his attention on the door through which the butler had vanished. "Our negotiations will cease momentarily. You may have been outbid."

Voldemort looked like he might curse the vampire, but before he could do anything, the door opened again and the butler re-entered, a familiar figure following behind him.

"Lord Valentine, may I present the Assistant."

Cloak sweeping about him, the Assistant walked up the aisle, dragging behind him a woman dressed all in white, chains wrapped around her and a piece of duct tape over her mouth.

He stopped just short the Death Eaters, looking over them, at Voldemort, and then at Gabriel—and Harry.

His easy expression hardened abruptly. He dropped the woman, flicked his hand, and she turned into a leather bracelet which he snapped around his wrist and buckled in place. He dropped that hand so it fell beneath his rune-covered cloak, and pointed the other at Harry.

"Leave the kid alone."

Gabriel didn't move. "You have no right—"

"Leave him. He's seven months to young for you to turn, and five years too young for you to fuck, so don't even pretend you'll take him. If you want to talk about Aurelia, you let him go, or I walk out of here right now, Gabriel."

Gabriel only tightened his hold on Harry, who was perfectly content where he was and didn't appreciate the Assistant coming in and making demands where he wasn't wanted.

"You would not reach the door, Assistant."

The Assistant made a single sweeping gesture with his hand—and every vampire in the room save Gabriel himself suddenly pinned to the walls. They cried out and struggled, hissed vicious threats through their fangs until the Assistant closed his fist and they were all silenced. The four humans from earlier were all dead now, their bodies left on the floor.

"Leave. The kid. Alone."

"What is he to you?"

"None of your concern."

"You attack my people for him. That's my concern."

"No, your concern is whether I walk out of here with Aurelia. I promise you, if I do, I will return her to normal and then I will stand at her side. You do not want me to give my loyalty to your enemies."

"Your loyalty is worth very little," Voldemort remarked angrily.

The Assistant looked over at him with a grim smile. "My loyalty is worth just as much as I decide. You murdered Severus, you lost my loyalty." He gaze shifted back to Gabriel. "You threaten Harry, you push my loyalty to Aurelia. We will wipe out you and your nest in a matter of weeks."

"You're very confident in yourself," Gabriel said. The Assistant said nothing. When Gabriel didn't move, he turned on his heel—

—and then Gabriel was behind him, grabbing at him. Harry never even saw him move, just felt the presence at his back vanish and saw the vampire reappear at the Assistant—

—who slammed an elbow backwards in Gabriel's abdomen, and the vampire was thrown to the floor. The Assistant turned, looking down at him.

"I have dealt with you before, Gabriel. You will not best me this time."

As Gabriel got to his feet, Voldemort turned to Harry. "Kill the Assistant, _now_ , or I acti-"

* * *

The Assistant shifted his hand as Harry crumpled to the floor, unconscious. Lucius, Antonin, and Bellatrix soon followed suit. With another sweep of his hand, the vampires, still squirming in silence, went floating out the doors, which slammed shut behind them.

"Now," he said in the following silence, his voice seeming to echo through the now empty hall, "let's talk deals."

"I'll discuss nothing with you," Voldemort snarled, wand in hand, though he didn't raise it. He was learning.

"I'm rather less inclined to deal with you myself," Gabriel said, moving so he could keep both humans in his line of sight.

"You threatened Harry," the Assistant said with a shrug. "I made my position clear. Leave him be—and you," he said to Voldemort, "stop trying to use him against me and we can all talk like civilised men. Or at least, you and I can, Lord Valentine."

Voldemort bristled, and said to Gabriel, "This man is not loyal to his word. He will betray you as soon as you give him chance."

"Were he offering his loyalty, that might be an issue," Gabriel replied, then said to the Assistant, "As it stands, I consider all our previous negotiations void. Any current negotiations will be over the bracelet around your wrist." He shifted his gaze from the Assistant to Voldemort. "Right now, you are outbid. You are worth nothing to me unless you can give me what he refuses."

The Assistant shifted his cloak back so it was pushed over his shoulder, letting his arm show and tauntingly displaying the bracelet. "I'll hand her over just as soon as you swear to give no aid to Voldemort during the war."

Gabriel looked at him coolly. "I'm to put faith in your word?"

"I'm to put faith in _yours_ ," the Assistant threw back. "If I'm to trust you won't join Voldemort's side once our deal is struck, you're to trust I'll hand Aurelia over once him and his people have left this house."

"Your people will be crushed if the Ministry wins against me," Voldemort interjected. "Your rights will continue to be taken until you're treated as no more than animals. As no more than the werewolves are."

Gabriel's lips drew back, baring his teeth in a snarl. "Do not ever compare me to those beasts."

"Empty propaganda," the Assistant countered. "He cares no more for you than for the werewolves. He hates all things impure. The Ministry is a bitch, no doubt, but things will not go quite so badly for you as he would have you believe."

"I will bring freedom to this world for all creatures."

"Creatures, you see? Not people. That's how he sees you."

"And how do you see me?" Gabriel asked the Assistant.

"A man to be bargained with. You say our previous negotiations are void? Fine. Dumbledore will manage without you and it's no skin off my back. I've already stated my place, but here's a little more incentive: if you do believe the Ministry and wizards as a whole are imposing entirely too much on vampires, killing Aurelia will only be to your advantage. You can have her people swear themselves to you—those that agree—and increase your nest by some fifty percent. Numbers like that, you could take a fight to the Ministry yourself, if you're so inclined."

"You will—" Voldemort began, but Gabriel held up a hand.

"Stop. You've lost, Dark Lord. You lost the moment this man walked in with my lifelong enemy in chains. My nest will never fight for your war."

Voldemort started fingering his wand. The Assistant pointed at the doors behind him.

"I'll open those and fight for him in this moment," he warned. "You can't stand against us all and you know it."

"Take your people and leave," Gabriel ordered. "I'll withdraw the seduction from them."

Voldemort, expression utterly furious, nodded once.

The Assistant shifted his hand to point at the Death Eaters, but hesitated before waking them to say, "You try and set Harry against me and you'll regret it."

He didn't wait for an answer, just flicked his wrist. The Death Eaters woke, and the door of the room opened as well. Vampires swarmed into the room, but at a single raised hand from Gabriel, they only spread around the edges, not attacking.

"We're leaving," Voldemort said shortly to the Death Eaters, and swept towards the door. The Death Eaters hurried to follow. Harry looked afraid as he went, one trembling hand pressed over his throat. The Assistant would liked to have given him some advice on recovering from the seduction, but it would only anger Voldemort more to see them interacting, and Harry would likely suffer the brunt of Voldemort's anger when they returned to the hospital anyway.

The Assistant started to undo the bracelet around his wrist, but Gabriel suddenly snarled. The Assistant lifted his head, had just enough time to see the vampire's face twisted with fury, and then Gabriel was across the room faster than the Assistant could see. He reappeared behind Voldemort—

—and then every vampire in the place burst into flames.

* * *

Severus wasn't comfortable being out in the open without Polyjuice, but dealing with demons was something he thought he ought to do in his own face. He didn't know how strong their powers might be at seeing through disguises, especially when it came to dealing in souls. They might get upset if they thought he was trying to trick them, and he didn't want to face an upset demon.

As an introvert who'd spent perhaps six weeks a year at his home, most of the locals didn't recognise him even before he 'died', but he still took the precaution of leaving Cokeworth. He went to a nearby hamlet, one that didn't have streetlights, and put up a few enchantments around the crossroad at its centre to protect against wandering Muggles.

He opened the bag he used to use for transporting potions and took out a simple glass jar, which he lit a bluebell flame in. He took out a torn book page, a jar of white paint, and a brush, and on the ground around him copied the symbol on the page: a scorpion inside a circle, inside a seven-pointed star inside a heptagon, inside two concentric circles with runic magic in the space between them.

A devil's trap.

He made four, placing one at each cardinal direction around the centre of the crossroads, letting their outer edges meet so that, once they were done, it was impossible to approach him from any direction without stepping in one. When they were painted, he conjured a thin lay of concrete over the top, just enough to hide them from view without making the road obviously mislaid. Demons were said to be perceptive of some magics; he couldn't risk using charms to hide the devil's traps.

With that done, he vanished the painting tools, removed a shoebox from his bag, put out the bluebell flame and waited for his eyes to readjust to the dark, and then flicked his wand at the centre of the crossroads. A piece of concrete flew out and he crouched to place the box in the hole. A bit of transfiguration reshaped the concrete chunk to fit smoothly back over the box, and he straightened up.

The demon appeared without a sound, a middle aged woman in a crisp business suit, hair tied in a tight bun. She might have reminded him of a Muggle version of McGonagall, except the red eyes made him think of Voldemort.

"What can I do for you?" she asked briskly, clearly intent on business. That suited Severus just fine.

"My son made a deal with one of you some eight and a half years ago. I want to do a trade."

"Only the boss can do exchanges, and they almost never happen. Would you like to request something else?"

"Tell me how to speak to your boss."

She looked him over. Severus gripped his wand tightly, held down by his side. He wasn't going to leave it in a pocket when he was facing demons, even if it did make him appear a threat to them.

The demon nodded. "Wait here," she said, and disappeared as noiselessly as she came. It made Severus uncomfortable. Harry was the only other person he'd met who could appear and disappear without a sound. Even Dumbledore made a soft pop of noise when he Apparated. Severus didn't like to think of his son sharing traits with demons.

A man appeared, average height, dark hair receding from his forehead. He was dressed in a suit as well, all black save for the Slytherin green tie, and stood relaxed with hands tucked in the pockets of an unbuttoned overcoat. He smiled at Severus.

"I hear you're wanting an exchange," he said with a cockney accent.

Severus raised an eyebrow. "You're the boss?"

"King of the Crossroads," the demon agreed with a grin. "Name's Crowley. You are?"

"The father of Harry Evans, once named Harry Potter. He made deal with one of—"

"Me." The demon was grinning even wider now, hands coming out of his pockets to clap together gleefully. "He made a deal with me. How is he doing? Must be bigger by now, eh? Tiny little thing he was when—put that down!"

Severus had his wand up, aimed straight at Crowley's head. Crowley stopped smiling instantly.

" _You_ took my son's soul?" Severus heard his voice come out like a growl and didn't care.

"I haven't taken anything," the demon said, gaze never leaving the wand, hands carefully loose by his sides. They could do wandless magic, Severus knew. "I made him a deal, like everyone else. I gave him ten years, so he's still got his soul for another sixteen months."

"End it," Severus snarled. "Put an end to it right now."

The demon cocked his head. "Why would I do that? Because you're threatening me?" he laughed.

Severus' fingers clenched. With effort, he forced himself to lower the wand. He couldn't attack yet, not until the demon was closer. He just hadn't expected to actually come face to face with the same demon Harry dealt with.

"There," the demon said, grinning again. "Much more civilised."

"I want my son freed."

"No."

"An exchange," Severus bit out. "My soul for his."

The demon stepped closer. Not quite in the circle yet. "No deal."

"I'm not asking ten years. You can have me in sixteen months."

"No deal."

"Why not?" Severus snapped.

"Because your soul isn't worth anywhere near as much as Harry's."

That was no surprise. Severus didn't think highly enough of himself to be offended by the remark.

"Then it's a matter of price. I need to find someone whose soul is worth as much as Harry's."

The demon threw his head back and laughed. Severus clenched his fist and waited for it to stop.

"A soul worth as much!" the demon eventually chuckled, and gave Severus a look much like Severus would give an incompetent student. "There is no soul worth as much as Harry's. I outdid myself with that kid. I outdid everyone with that kid! The power I gave him made his soul worth ten times what it originally was. We're not giving that up for anything, not when there's still a chance at redemption."

"Redemption?" Severus repeated, resisting the urge to look down as the demon took another step closer.

"Your boy's done some bad, bad things," the demon said in a mocking tone of disapproval, though he was still grinning. "But nothing so bad as to be unforgivable. If his deal was voided and he acted to redeem himself, we'd lose his soul to the angels and we're not doing that."

"What's so important about Harry's soul?"

"Power," the demon hissed. "That's all souls are—power. Harry's soul is one of the most powerful we've ever seen. And I did that. If we lost him to heaven, you can't begin to imagine what'd happen to me."

Severus' lip curled. "I thought you were the boss. The King of the Crossroads."

The demon's grin dropped slightly and he shifted his shoulders. "I am."

"But not the king of hell."

"That's what Lucifer's for, innit?" he snapped, cockney accent thickening in his anger. "None of us get to rule hell as long as he's around."

He moved closer as he spoke, and then he was that last final distance into one of the hidden devil's traps.

Severus waved his wand and the thin layer of concrete he'd conjured vanished. The demon looked down, expression turning furious as he took in the four devil's traps, particularly the one he stood in, and then he looked back up.

"Clever little trap you made," he said, voice entirely lacking any humour or mockery now.

"Release my son from his deal."

"And take away his magic?"

Severus hesitated. The demon smiled nastily, nothing like the delightful grin from earlier.

"Didn't think of that, did you? You thought you could get him out of paying up and still get to keep all that power I gave him. Does he know you're trying to make him impotent?"

Severus ground his teeth, raising his wand to aim at the demon. "My son was a wizard before he ever made a deal with you. He'll still be one afterwards."

"A weak wizard. An average one maybe. But do you really think he'll be satisfied with that, after spending this long with that much power at his fingertips?"

No, he wouldn't. Severus had no doubt. And Harry needed that power right now. As long as Voldemort was alive, Severus couldn't take that from him.

Unless someone else had that power. If Severus had Harry's Wish Magic, he could kill Voldemort, much that the idea terrified him, and he could free Harry of his deal. Assuming he _could_ Wish Harry free of it. Had Harry already tried? If he had, maybe it wouldn't work on himself but would coming from someone else.

Then again, maybe it wouldn't. Maybe Severus would sell his soul and still not be able to save his son. Would it be worth it? He had to admit, he'd always been jealous of Harry's power. Severus enjoyed the hard work and dedication it took to be as skilled a wizard as he was, but that didn't make Harry's easy power any less appealing.

That said, he wasn't sure he could keep that kind of power from going to his head. If he could do as much as Harry could, he would never be content to just sit back and do nothing with it. Given his history, he was more likely to end up as the next Voldemort than the next Merlin.

But if it gave him the chance to save his son…

The demon was smirking at him. It clearly thought it'd won even as it stood trapped before Severus, unable to escape the circle until Severus broke it.

Severus tightened his fingers on his wand. "There's nothing I can do to get you to release Harry from paying his deal? With or without keeping his power?"

"Nothing. Not even exorcising me. Not even exorcising a hundred demons. We'll never give up his soul."

"Fine," Severus said, and jerked his wand down. "Then I want to make a deal for the same power he has."


	43. Chapter 43

**Chapter 43**

The Assistant was used to pain. He'd spent what had to be a thousand years pissing people off and getting Bound to one vicious Master after another. Not to mention all the Voldemorts he'd upset, the painful accidents resulting in serious injury or death, and that wife who'd cursed him to feel the pain of their second child being born because of a few careless comments during the birth of their first child.

So he was used to pain. That didn't make it any more pleasant, and having his arm set on fire was definitely among the more unpleasant kinds of pain. His robe sleeve was gone and the skin up to his elbow seared away by the time he got rid of the burning bracelet and put out the flames on his arm. He healed himself just enough to ease the pain and let him function, then focused on getting out. He'd have Apparated away immediately if he could, but Gabriel had protections on his house almost as strong as those around Hogwarts.

All around him people were on fire, screaming. A few had the sense to drop to the ground, but there were so many people running around that rolling space was limited. Windows smashed and he saw flaming towers leap out of them. There was a swimming pool elsewhere in the house; the older vampires, the ones that could handle the flames better, were probably hoping to get to the water in time.

The Assistant put up a Bubblehead Charm, lungs already burning from the smoke and the stench, and forced his way through the crowd. A Flame-Freezing Charm proved ineffective—bloody magical fire—and he hesitated to actually put the vampires out, crazy as it seemed. It would be easier to escape a nest of burning vampires than a nest of charred but alive and very angry vampires.

He reached the doors of the throne room, found Harry knelt on the floor with his hands over his head, trembling and surrounded by what looked like an extended Bubblehead Charm, not a flicker of flame coming near him. Bellatrix was nearby, beating at her flaming hair, and Antonin had a Bubblehead Charm up and was blasting curses at vampires that got too close, but there was no sign of Lucius or Voldemort.

The Assistant put out Bellatrix's hair, Stunned her and added a Featherlight Charm, and hauled her over his shoulders in a fireman's carry. He grabbed Harry's arm, bit down a scream at the shock of pain Harry lashed through him, and wrenched the kid to his feet. Harry stared at the Assistant wildly, but stayed standing and didn't try to pull free.

"Toni!"

Antonin whipped around and the Assistant deflected a Blasting Hex.

"Where's Lucius?"

Antonin shook his head. "I don't know.

The Assistant gave Harry a shake.

"Can you take down the protections on the house?" he asked. Harry just stared at him, still shaking like a leaf, apparently mindless. The Assistant cursed. Bloody fucking vampire seduction. Gabriel must have pulled it off him too quickly and the kid's mind was still reeling from the whiplash. The Assistant couldn't take down the spells himself, not with his mind focused on keeping him alive and out of enough pain to protect the rest of the humans.

"Fuck!" he yelled, spitting his frustration, then focused again. "Toni, follow me! Stay close!"

Antonin only hesitated a moment, but he was no idiot. The Assistant might be an enemy, but as long as he presented a chance for them to get out alive then Antonin would follow him.

The crowd of vampires was thinning, bodies dropping as they died, but the fire was only getting worse as it caught on furniture, curtains, and carpets. The Assistant pushed through, pulling Harry along with him while Antonin followed behind. He magically forced aside dead and dying vampires and redirected flames that blocked their path.

When they found Lucius passed out on the floor, the Assistant called back, "Toni, grab him!"

"Lucius isn't my responsibility."

"Grab him or I leave Bella behind."

Antonin grabbed him.

They reached the house's front door, which had been blasted off the hinges and lay broken in the driveway. In the distance, almost at the gates, the Assistant could see the figure of what was undoubtedly Voldemort.

The Assistant glanced behind him as he left, pausing just long enough to cast a raining charm into the house. It wasn't heavy enough to instantly douse any vampires still alive, but it might help a few of them survive. He didn't care to see them all die, he just didn't want them coming after him or Harry right now.

At the gates, Voldemort had stopped. He was past the border of the property and thus the protections on it, but he must have turned to look at the house once more and seen them coming. He didn't look surprised to see the Assistant lugging one of his Death Eaters over his shoulders, but expressing emotions had never been his strong point.

Once out on the road. The Assistant dumped Bellatrix none too gently on the ground, dispelled his Bubblehead Charm, and faced Voldemort, who raised his wand as if he could actually do anything with it.

"I just saved four of your best men," the Assistant said bluntly, voice turning rough as the pain he'd been trying to ignore insisted on making itself felt. "Lucius probably needs his lungs checking. The kid's coming with me so he can actually recover from Gabriel's seduction. You can summon him tomorrow, after sunrise, but call before then and I'll be the one to come and set your house on fire."

He didn't wait for an answer, just gripped Harry's arm tighter and Apparated away.

* * *

"No."

Severus stepped forward, stopping on the edge of the devil's trap. "No?"

"No," Crowley repeated.

"I'm not asking for Harry—"

"I heard what you asked for," the demon said, shoving his hands in his pockets. "And the answer's no."

Severus felt his lips curl in anger. "You refuse to make any deal with me?"

"I'll make a deal with you, but not for that and not for your son."

"Why not for the power that Harry has?"

"Because one person running around with that much power is more than enough. Don't get me wrong," the demon said, flashing another glimpse of that self-satisfied grin he'd had earlier, "I'm well pleased with myself for that deal. What I gave your kid was way beyond what any demon's done before, but it was a bit of an accident and we don't really want it happening again."

Some of Severus' anger faded. "He's a threat to you," he realised. "You're afraid of the power you gave him."

The demon looked offended. "I'm not afraid of a teenager."

"You're afraid of Harry." He stepped back, feeling calmer. "He's a threat to you. That means he has a chance at survival, no matter what you refuse."

The demon shook its head, but it wasn't smiling. "His soul is ours. Nothing will change that. Do what you like, Severus Snape—" Severus tensed "—but in sixteen months your son dies and his soul comes straight to us."

There was nothing to say to that. Severus raised his wand and this time actually used it. " _Arkamda olsun_."

He'd practised the pronunciation and it worked first time. The demon staggered, screamed, and black smoke came pouring out of his mouth. It coalesced above the devil's trap, but still couldn't escape the confines. Severus shifted the grip on his wand, drew it around and up in a half circle, then slashed it sharply downwards.

" _Vadeana_."

With a noise like a distant scream, the black smoke was sucked downwards, swirled briefly above the ground like morning mist building to a tornado, and then crackled through the concrete before vanishing to nothing.

Severus waited a moment before cautiously approaching the man left behind in the circle. To his surprise, the man groaned and rolled over, pushing himself up to his hands and knees. He looked up, saw Severus, and threw himself away, landing on his backside and then scuttling backwards.

"Stay away from me! Witch!"

Any sympathy and concern Severus had vanished in an instant at the man's tone.

"You're a _Muggle_." The word came out with more disgust and hatred than it had in years.

"Witch!" the man shrieked. "Witch! Help, someone help me!"

Severus thrust his wand out, there was a bang of red light, and the man collapsed. Severus left him while he vanished the devil's traps, dug out the shoebox he'd used for the summoning, and dismantled the protective charms he'd put up earlier. He went to the Muggle, gave him the courtesy of dragging the man out of the road, then erased his memory of all things magic and demons before Apparating home.

He was not pleased to find two people sitting on his living room floor. He'd been planning to dig out a bottle of vodka and get thoroughly drunk, not face down the Assistant. He wrenched out his wand and snapped it up, directed at the man's head. The Assistant just gaped at him.

"Dad, wait," Harry said, and that word was enough to frazzle Severus' thought processes. He stared at Harry, who was knelt by the Assistant, holding his hand.

" 'Dad'?"

Harry's cheeks reddened slightly, but all he said was, "He saved my life."

"What?"

"Harry, watch it," the Assistant said, grimacing. Severus looked down, realised that Harry hadn't been holding the Assistant's hand, but slathering orange paste over it—burn paste, Severus recognised. There was also an unmistakable stench of smoke and burnt bacon in the air, and Harry had a bandage wrapped around his throat.

"What happened?" Severus demanded.

They told him. By the time they were finished, Severus had lowered his wand and moved further into the room, dropping his bag by a bookcase and sitting into his armchair.

"It seems an implausible coincidence that you decided to go to Valentine the same day the Dark Lord did," Severus said to the Assistant. He still didn't know why Harry hadn't just erased the man's memory and sent him on his way, but they'd get to that.

"It wasn't," the Assistant said blithely. His arm was stiff with burn paste now and Harry had Wished for a pain reliever so the Assistant was far more relaxed than he had any right to be. "I was hanging about his place, figured he might have something nasty planned for New Years. I've been negotiating with Gabriel on Dumbledore's behalf, but when I saw you were all going to Valentine's, I figured Voldemort was outbidding me. Had to be if they were far enough in negotiation stages for Voldemort to personally visit him. Only one way to top that, so I went and grabbed Aurelia, brought her over."

"Who's Aurelia?" Severus asked.

"She's Gabriel Valentine's archenemy," Harry promptly provided.

"Archenemy?" Severus couldn't help his lip curling. "They're not comic book villains."

"I know that, but they've hated each other for centuries. Gabriel's meant to be almost two thousand years old and we know Aurelia is—there's records of her dating back to the first century, although only after she became a vampire, no one knows about her life as a human. They've been trying to kill each other this whole time, they couldn't even work together during the sixteenth century uprising, and every few centuries they—"

"Harry."

Harry snapped his mouth shut. "Sorry."

"What I want to know," the Assistant said, looking amused by Harry's rambling, "is what made Gabriel attack Voldemort while you guys were leaving. Everything was fine and then all of a sudden…"

Harry looked down at his lap. "He told me to kill them. The Dark Lord, he said if they wouldn't work for him then they shouldn't work for anyone."

The Assistant blew out an understanding breath. "Gabriel heard. Fucking idiot, you'd think the Dark Lord would know how sensitive their hearing is. Tch. Still," he said, looking down at his hand, the paste now hard and starting to crack, "couldn't you have done it some other way than fire? Chop their heads off or something. Mind you, that might have taken my whole hand off…"

"I didn't mean to," Harry objected. "When the Dark Lord told me to do it, I wasn't even thinking properly, I couldn't get my head clear, and then Gabriel attacked and I just…"

"How is your head?" Severus asked. "Have you seized?"

"No, I'm fine. It was just…" He shivered, wrapping his arms around himself, and his voice went quiet. "When I was under it, the seduction, I didn't want it to stop. I didn't care that they were talking about me like I was just a… a piece of meat to be traded. I wanted to be with Gabriel no matter what. And then it went away and my head was whirling and I couldn't think properly and… now I'm terrified. It wasn't like the Imperius Curse."

"Soul magic," the Assistant said grimly. "The Imperius Curse only affects the mind; vampire seduction works on the soul."

"Have you been under it?"

The Assistant picked at the paste on his arm, pulling away the dried chunks, vanishing them and revealing the unusually pink but healed skin beneath. "Yes," he said slowly, "but it's different for me. The Animancupium is soul magic as well and it protects me from the seduction. Only a vampire who's my Master can use it against me."

Harry frowned. "I thought the Animancupium ritual had a blood exchange. Wouldn't you turn into a vampire if they did it?"

The Assistant shook his head. "The blood exchange is minimal, it's not enough to turn me."

"So you had a vampire for a Master before Yaxley?" Severus asked.

"Oh, no, Gabriel was my master… god, ages ago now. I don't know. I guess I should probably tell you guys about me," he said, rubbing his arm clear of the last few flakes of burn paste then looking between Severus and Harry. "Then you can explain how Severus here isn't dead."

Severus scowled. He saw no reason to tell this man anything, but he did want to know about the Assistant. "What do you mean tell us about you?"

The Assistant looked up at him, cocked his head, and then his appearance changed, and Severus suddenly had a whole host of new questions.

* * *

Harry sat sipping at his water, staring across at the Assistant, still trying to process the fact that this man was him from an alternate universe. It was just so _strange_.

And distressing, because the Assistant was thirty-four (physically, at least) and Harry would never get to be that old. The only reason the Assistant wasn't burning in hell was because of his time loop; he gone back in time the day before his ten years were up, which was two days later than Harry had made his own deal.

"That day changes," the Assistant had admitted when Harry pointed it out. "The deal's always made sometime between the seventh and eighth birthday, but exactly when is changeable."

He also absolutely refused to tell Harry what magic he'd done to get stuck in the time loop.

"It's no way to escape your deal," he'd said. "Trust me, even hell looks appealing after seeing the same nineteen years over and over again."

"There's no guarantee it would work anyway," Snape had said with a frown. "There's every chance having two of you in a timeloop would cause a universe-breaking paradox, or that the time travel spell would simply fail so as to prevent such a thing."

Harry was keeping it in mind as a last resort anyway.

Now the Assistant looked up from repairing his robe and caught Harry staring. "Alright?"

Harry nodded. "Sorry about your arm."

"I'll live. I've had worse."

"I can't believe I killed them all," Harry said morosely. "I can't believe I killed Gabriel Valentine!"

Snape made a harsh noise. "He would have killed you. You said yourself that you're terrified by the seduction. He deserved to die!"

"No he didn't!" Harry cried. "I mean, yeah, I don't like being put under the seduction, but I could have done something else! Don't you realise what I've done? The history I destroyed? Gabriel was two thousand years old, he's a pinnacle of European vampire history, he may very well have actually started the uprising and I killed him and now no one will ever know!"

Snape put a hand over his face and sighed. The Assistant laughed.

"Relax, kid. You might not have killed him."

Snape jerked his hand down. Harry stared. "What?"

"The fire didn't necessarily kill him, or all the others. A lot of them definitely, but some of them could have survived. Mind you, you should probably hope Gabriel is dead. He won't be happy that you killed most of his nest."

Harry opened his mouth to object that nothing was worth destroying that much history, but then changed his mind. The seduction did terrify him, more and more every time he remembered being under it, and he didn't want Gabriel Valentine hunting him down and doing that to him again, no matter how bad Harry felt about destroying history.

"I have a question," Snape said, looking at the Assistant unkindly. He was no more fond of the Assistant now than he had been half an hour ago. If anything, he seemed to dislike him more. Harry suspected he thought the Assistant was lying about not being able to ever save Lily from dying—apparently she always died, no matter what, even when the Assistant tried to save her.

Harry didn't doubt that it was true. She was their mum; he knew the Assistant would do everything he could to save her if possible.

"Shoot," the Assistant said.

"Why did you save Dolohov, Bellatrix, and Lucius?"

The Assistant shrugged. "I like them."

"You _like_ them?" Snape repeated incredulously.

"Yeah, I like them. Look, I betrayed Voldemort because I thought he killed you. You might not think much of me, but you still look like my father and that tends to make me think more kindly of you than I probably should. But just because I betrayed Voldemort doesn't mean I stopped liking the other Death Eaters."

"Murderers and rapists," Snape spat. "Vicious creatures that would just as soon torture you as they did me!"

The Assistant shrugged again. "Most of them have, in previous timelines. But I've got more blood on my hands than all of them combined. You might keep in mind that your hands aren't exactly clean, Severus. Lucius was your friend once, too, and I know you liked Toni. Everyone likes Toni."

"I don't," Harry muttered.

 _I do,_ the voice said.

"Shut up."

Snape got that little twist of anger in his expression that always came when Harry spoke to the voice aloud. The Assistant looked at him, confused.

"You telling me to shut up?"

"No."

"Then… oh, wait, you hear voices, don't you?"

"I hear _a_ voice," Harry countered. "That's different. I'm not some crazy person with little people in his head telling him to do horrible things."

 _I absolutely tell you to do horrible things, but only for your own good, which I guess doesn't technically make them horrible._

"Hate to break it to you, but the difference between crazy and not crazy is any voices, not the number of voices."

 _He's right._

"Shut up," Harry snapped.

"That one was at me, wasn't it?"

"Yes." Harry vanished his glass and stood up. "I should…" He stopped, frowned, asked, "Should I go to the Dark Lord?"

"I told him not to call for you until morning," the Assistant said.

"That's no excuse," Snape countered, and said to Harry, "The Dark Lord will not look kindly on your running off with this idiot."

"Oi," the Assistant objected half-heartedly. "Also, it was more of a kidnapping, thus not Harry's fault."

"Of course, because the Dark Lord always appoints blame so logically."

"Fair point. Basically it doesn't matter, he'll torture you either way," the Assistant decided. "Might as well get some sleep before you go."

Snape glared at the Assistant even as he spoke to Harry. "He may torture you less if you turn up of your own free will. He wouldn't torture you at all if you took _him_ with you as a sacrificial peace offering."

"I'm not turning him over to be killed," Harry said.

"I wouldn't let you, anyway," the Assistant added.

"You think he couldn't overpower you?" Snape sneered.

"Only if I don't know it's coming. Might get me with a sneak attack, but when I'm prepared for the possibility? No. Right now for example."

Snape's brow furrowed. Harry scowled.

"How are you even doing that?" Harry demanded.

"Doing what?" Snape asked, irritated and baffled.

"I'm trying to Wish him into chains. They're not even appearing!"

"I'm not telling you all my secrets," the Assistant said with a grin. "But I will tell you our magic is different. Come see me some day and we can talk about it. I'll teach you a few secrets if you teach me how to keep people alive for a week underground."

"It's different?" Harry said, forgetting about leaving. "How?"

"You call yours Wish Magic, right? Just make a wish and it happens? It's not like that for me," the Assistant said when Harry nodded. "I also know that you've got a boatload more power than me. Shiploads, even. You're like a powerhouse."

Harry sat back down. "I don't understand. How is it we're different with this?"

"Probably the deal. What did you ask for when you made it?"

"The power to defend myself."

"Ah, well, there we go. You asked for power and got it in spades."

"What did you ask for?" Snape asked, sounding curious despite himself.

"Ability to manipulate and control magic better than anyone else ever could. I wasn't looking to defend myself, I just wanted to bring my parents back to life."

"That's impossible."

The Assistant shrugged. "I know. I knew that then, it's why I asked for what I did. I figured that if I could control magic, really control magic, make it mine to command, then I could overcome the limits of necromancy. I can—I can return a dead body to a state of living that no other wizard ever has, but it doesn't make the person alive. Sod's law, of course, I find out later that demons can bring people back. Properly bring them back."

Harry and Snape both gasped at that.

"They can?" Harry asked, leaning forwards, visions of his mum alive again.

 _Won't work,_ the voice told him snidely. _You already sold your soul. You can't make another deal._

Harry's gaze snapped to Snape. He seemed to realise what Harry was thinking, or perhaps he was thinking it himself, because he looked away.

"I won't do it," he said softly. "I won't bring her back."

"Why not?" Harry demanded, hearing the anger in his own voice and not caring. "I thought you loved her."

Snape's face turned back to him, twisting with just as much anger. "I did," he snarled. "Don't talk about what you don't know."

"Then why won't you bring her back?"

"Because I haven't broken your deal yet."

Harry gaped, then surged to his feet. He heard something crack—something wooden, a bookcase or door—as his anger grew and didn't care. "You won't make a deal until you know you can get out of it? You're that much of a coward?"

Snape burst out of his chair, looking more furious than Harry had ever seen. "Don't you dare say that to me!"

"Coward!"

" _I'm not!_ " Snape all but screamed, spittle flying from his lips. "I would go to hell for her in a heartbeat, but I won't bring her back while her son is destined for hell! I won't do that to her!"

Harry had opened his mouth to scream back, but at that he snapped his mouth shut and took a step back. He wasn't sure what showed on his face, but Snape's anger faded, a look of concern taking it's place.

"Harry, I—"

"No," Harry said, hearing his voice waver. "You're right. She shouldn't come back, not when I'm… and not just that but…" He touched his left arm. How could he even think of facing his mother when he had a Dark Mark on his arm, when he bent his knee to the very man who'd killed her?

"Harry…"

"I'm sorry," he said, avoiding Snape's gaze. "I didn't mean to yell at you. I'm going now."

He didn't wait to hear a response.

* * *

"You going after him?" the Assistant asked.

Severus dragged his gaze down from the spot where Harry had been. "No," he said, then realised who he was talking to and scowled. "Not that it's any of your business. Get out. Go back to your cave."

"Not warmed to me much, have you?"

"I don't see any reason to," Severus replied coolly, staring at him, silently daring him to argue the point.

The Assistant didn't, just got to his feet and dusted himself off. "Alright. Still, you know where I live. Feel free to send a Patronus or an owl if you ever want company."

"Certainly, if I need locking in chains."

* * *

Harry went to the hospital first. Voldemort didn't torture him—he was satisfied with Harry's assault on the vampires—but he allowed Bellatrix and Lucius to each curse him once. Bellatrix's hair was cut boy short and half her face was puckered with burn scars. Lucius had none, but his breathing was ragged and his voice hoarse from smoke inhalation. Antonin, it seemed, had escaped unscathed.

"Control your magic," Voldemort warned, moving to his chair in one dark corner of the meeting room. "If you retaliate against them, accidentally or otherwise, I'll allow another curse. No Cruciatus," he added to Bellatrix and Lucius.

Bellatrix and Lucius looked at each other and Lucius gestured for her to go first. Bellatrix drew her wand, twirling it between her fingers as she circled Harry, thinking. Harry stood watching, bracing himself against the pain inevitably coming and focused on keeping his magic settled. When she stopped behind him, he tensed, then tried to relax in the hope it would hurt less.

"Lucius," she said, "if I use a Hypersensitivity Charm, what'll you do?"

Lucius hardly thought about it. "Itching Hex."

Bellatrix cackled. She was the only person Harry'd ever met whose laugh he could truly describe as a cackle. People like her were probably who Muggles based their fairy tales of evil witches on.

The tip of a wand pressed between Harry's shoulderblades, Bellatrix said a spell Harry recognised from the summer, and then he jerked. All of a sudden his clothes felt like sandpaper against his skin and he instinctively tried to shake it off, but even that small movement made the material scratch against him and he whimpered. He held his arms away from his body and stopped moving, trying to hold himself completely still, but he had to breathe. He tried to keep his breaths shallow, making his chest move as little as possible.

He caught a flicker of movement in the corner of his eyes. It was all the warning he got before the Itching Hex hit him. He jerked in instinctive response, then forced himself still again, but he couldn't keep it up. The full-body itch was impossible to ignore, but every attempt to scratch only caused more pain. He ended up on the floor, twitching and jerking, whimpering with pain as he rubbed at itches. The blunt pain of rubbing was less unpleasant than the sharp sting of scratching, but it was still pain.

He held out on begging for it to stop. This was a punishment, not an effort to coax him into something, so he knew it would do him no good to plead for mercy. He wanted to accept the punishment with whatever dignity he could manage when he was twitching on the floor, but as the minutes passed and the Itching Hex itself actually became painful, rather than just the Hypersensitivity Charm making his uncontrollable movements hurt, he cracked.

"Stop! P-please—fuck—st-stop, stop it, please!"

To his surprise, it did. The itching stopped first, then he felt the hypersensitivity fade. He collapsed against the floor, breathing raggedly, still twitching slightly with remnants of pain.

"Be more careful in future," Voldemort said. "You're all dismissed."

Harry heard Lucius and Bellatrix leave and forced himself to his feet to give shaky bow and stagger out.

He was still shaking when he appeared outside Malfoy Manor. He dropped to his knees, needing a moment to get a hold of himself before he went inside and faced Draco. He ached and he was exhausted, wanting nothing more than to sleep for a day. He wasn't even sure what time it was, how long had passed since he left Draco. Midnight had to have come and gone.

He didn't stay long. As much as he hurt, it was bitterly cold out. Shivering now more from cold than pain, he got up again and made his way to the gate. It opened at his touch, but it must have still sent some kind of alert into the house because Draco came rushing out to meet him before Harry got even halfway up the drive. Or perhaps he'd just been watching out a window.

"You were gone for ages. What—" He broke off with a sharp inhale, noticing the bandage still wrapped around Harry's throat. "You're hurt."

"I'm fine."

Draco's chest swelled. "You're not fine!" he snapped. "You're hurt and it's bad enough you can't heal it magically and you've been gone for ages and you look awful and…"

"And?" Harry said.

He stalked forwards, pulled Harry into a tight hug. "And I was worried about you, you stupid arse."

Harry clung to him just as tightly as Draco held him, burying his face in Draco's shoulder. "I'm fine, really."

"What happened?"

"Draco—"

"No. You tell me. I've been worried sick about you, Harry, now you come back injured and stinking of smoke? You tell me what happened."

Harry sighed, drew back. "Can we at least go inside first?"

Draco looked like he wanted to demand an explanation right there in the driveway, but he must have seen something in Harry's expression because he nodded and took his hand. He summoned the house elf as they headed inside and by the time they reached Draco's bedroom, a tray with two mugs of hot chocolate was sat on the desk. They each took one, settled on Draco's bed, and Harry told him what happened that night, edited slightly. He left out Snape, the Assistant's true identity (it wasn't his secret to tell), and Bellatrix and Lucius' punishment. Draco didn't need to know that his father had been hurting Harry.

When they'd finished their drinks and lay down to sleep, Draco spooned against Harry's back and asked quietly, "What was it like being under the seduction?"

"Like he was the only person in the world. It felt good, at the time, but now…" he shivered. "It's terrifying. I was willing to do anything for him. I didn't even care that they were talking about trading me, like I was just a thing to be bartered over. I only wanted to be with him."

Draco shifted, wrapping his arm around Harry and pulling him closer, and his voice was vicious when he spoke. "Then I'm glad he's dead."

* * *

Harry spent the next few days recovering, but on the night before they went back to Hogwarts, he and Draco had sex again. Harry topped this time, but he didn't find it as enjoyable. It did feel good, but he preferred bottoming.

The next afternoon, he and Draco flooed back into Hogwarts, stepping out into Professor Sinistra's office. She had a note for Harry from Dumbledore, setting the time of his next lesson for the following night.

 _About bloody time,_ the voice grumbled, to which Harry hummed a vague agreement and vanished the note. Right then, he had something else to focus on than Dumbledore's lessons. He took his luggage down to Slytherin, gave his excuses to Draco, and headed out again. Dragging his feet, he made his way up to the fourth floor, and stood outside Sirius and James' room for five full minutes before lifting his fist and knocking. He peeked in to check Sirius was actually there first, and was almost disappointed to see he was.

Three weeks had given him plenty of time to reflect on his words at Slughorn's party and he would admit that he'd been too harsh. But he also knew he was in the right. Sirius was too overbearing in his efforts to be protective. They needed to talk, to clear up the mess that'd come between them since the kidnapping. Part of Harry actually considered revealing the truth to Sirius about what happened that night, but he decided that probably wouldn't go down well.

It took Sirius a few moments to come answer the door. He looked surprised to see Harry, then sad, then forced an aloof expression on his face.

"What is it?"

"Can I come in?" Harry asked nervously. "Please?"

For a moment, he thought Sirius was going to refuse, then he stepped aside and gestured Harry through. Sirius shut the door after him, but didn't move from his spot, folding his arms over his chest.

"So? What do you want?"

His tone wasn't helping Harry make an apology. His instinctive reaction was to get defensive, so he forced himself to speak before irritation overtook his guilt and they ended up arguing again.

"I'm sorry for what I said at Slughorn's Christmas party. I shouldn't have said it. I know you're trying your best to look out for me."

He stopped then, mostly to keep himself from adding, 'But please stop because I really don't need it.'

Sirius didn't answer immediately, just stood there looking at Harry for so long that Harry grew uncomfortable and was about to speak again. Just as he started to open his mouth, Sirius sighed.

"Sit down," he said, gesturing at the sofa and joining Harry, who sat with his feet tucked under him and hands in his lap. Sirius sat sideways, one arm on the back of the sofa, one foot under him and the other flat on the floor.

"Apology accepted and all that," Sirius said. "And… look, I… I'm not apologising for what I said about Malfoy—let me finish," he added quickly when Harry opened his mouth to angrily reply, and Harry reluctantly kept quiet. "I won't apologise for it because from where I was standing, he _did_ look pushy, and I'm not the only one that thought so. I don't know enough about the kid to say whether he would force himself on you or not, but if you say he wouldn't then I'll take your word for it."

"He _wouldn't_ ," Harry said firmly.

"Fine, then I won't accuse him again. I still don't like it, but I won't say anything else on it."

"Good."

Sirius sighed again. "But, kid… you and me… look, I don't know if I've done something wrong or if this is you just being a teenager or what, but we've gotta figure this out. I don't like fighting with you as much as we have done. I thought things would be better once we were at school, but we just don't talk instead, except in class. You hardly ever come see me." He paused, looked at Harry worriedly, asked, " _Have_ I done something wrong?"

"No," Harry said slowly. Sirius clearly didn't believe him. "You haven't, Sirius. It's just… I'm sixteen and I've spent my whole life looking after myself. After what happened… you got too strict. I know you were worried about me, but—

"I _am_ worried about you."

"I know, and I appreciate that, I do, but Sirius, you can't just shut me in and keep watch over me all the time."

"Can't you see my point of view?" Sirius said, sounding like he was trying to restrain his frustration. "I let you go to Hogsmeade for two weeks for your exams and you end up kidnapped by Death Eaters. I'm just trying to protect you, kid."

"I'm out of this war, Sirius!" Harry couldn't reign in all his own frustration. "I'm not allowed any part of it or you die, remember? I'm not in danger anymore!"

"I don't believe that!" Sirius snapped, thumping his fist against the sofa. "We're talking about Death Eaters and Voldemort, for Merlin's sake! How can I believe that they wouldn't hurt you if they chanced upon you? Just because that bastard forced you out of fighting doesn't mean you're safe!"

"I can look after myself!"

"You—" he snarled, then stopped, took a deep breath, and tried in a slightly calmer voice, "You couldn't keep them off last time, or during the second Triwizard task."

Harry looked down, hands clenching in his lap.

"I know you're powerful, kid, but protecting yourself from these people takes skill as well as power. It takes experience."

 _It takes tattoos you still don't have,_ the voice said.

"I realise that," Harry said, fighting to keep his temper in check. He was more angry at the truth of Sirius' words than at Sirius himself. His lack of experience was something he'd realised on New Years, when he discovered the Assistant's true identity. The Assistant was far above even the most skilled of wizards, but he'd said Harry had far more power than he did, and yet he repeatedly beat Harry when they came face to face. His experience gave him an edge that all the power in the world didn't give Harry.

"I realise that," he said again, and looked up, "but Sirius, I can't just stay shut away like you want. I can't be constantly watched over by you. I'm too used to my freedom; I can't change that just because things are more dangerous now."

"You never used to go out this much. Summer before this one, you agreed to tell us when and where you were going, and the summer before that you were happy to go out with me. This summer you barely had the courtesy to tell me when you were leaving the house. You didn't even seem to want me around. Why?"

 _Because you were busy killing people and then feeling guilty from it._

Harry bit down on his lip, silently telling the voice to shut up unless it was going to say anything useful.

"Kid, don't go quiet on me now," Sirius said, reaching over to squeeze his arm. "Talk to me."

"I spent two weeks locked in a room smaller than my bedroom at home," Harry said quietly, not looking at him. "The windows didn't even open and my bathroom was a tiny little en suite. I spent a week forced to listen to Antonin Dolohov telling me how I should be _honoured_ to work for Voldemort and eager to kill Muggles. Then I spent a week getting… I couldn't stay inside, Sirius. I had to get out, I had to get away. I'm sorry it hurt you, I didn't mean to be so… so cold. I just…"

Sirius sighed. He twisted to sit forwards and shuffled over so he was shoulder to shoulder with Harry. He didn't try to hug him, just sat close. "I wish you'd talked to me."

"I couldn't talk about it. Not to anyone."

"Malfoy?"

Harry shook his head.

"But you let him see your panic attacks."

"I was trying to protect you," Harry muttered. "You were worrying enough about me and you had to deal with what happened to Remus, and then we found out about James and…" He trailed off with a shrug. "I didn't want to give you something else to worry about. Where is James anyway?"

"Helping Filch sort out the Great Hall. Some Hufflepuff tried to paint the place yellow and overdid their paint conjuring."

"Why didn't they just charm it yellow?"

"Because teenagers are stupid."

"I'm not stupid."

"You're stupid enough to think I need protecting by you instead of the other way around. I'm not trying to start an argument," he added when Harry's mouth twisted. "Look, what's done is done. We both could have talked to each other a bit more this summer. I wasn't very approachable either, I realise that, and maybe I have been a bit too heavy handed in trying to protect you. I'm just… I lost so many friends during the last war. I saw so many people die, good people, strong witches and wizards cut down by those bastards. It was supposed to be over when you defeated Voldemort, but then he comes back and people are dying all over again, you've been hurt so much already, and Remus is gone… you and James are all I have left, Harry. If I lost you…"

Harry glanced at him and was startled to see tears in Sirius' eyes. On impulse, he twisted and hugged him, buried his face in Sirius' shoulder as Sirius' own arms came around him. For a long moment they just sat like that. Harry heard Sirius sniff a few times and swallow thickly, but said nothing until Sirius seemed less likely to burst into sobs.

"I can't promise I won't get hurt again," Harry said quietly, "and I can't let you keep trying to shut me in or watch over me all the time. I need my space. But I promise I'll be careful."

There was a pause, then Sirius shifted to take Harry's arms and push him back so he could look him in the face. "Kid," he said, half-warning, half-disbelieving, "that almost sounds like you've been leaving the school."

Harry looked down.

" _Are you fucking kidding me?_ "

Harry flinched. Sirius let go of him and Harry drew away, leaning against the arm of the sofa.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to scare you. But seriously? You've been leaving the school?"

"It was only twice," Harry said, deciding that the summons on the Hogsmeade weekend didn't count because he was already off the school grounds.

"What the hell for? You've got the whole bloody school to go around, Harry. You can't tell me you find the castle and grounds oppressive. I can forgive some late night wandering, but leaving the grounds…"

Harry looked away and didn't answer. He couldn't come up with a suitable lie that would satisfy Sirius on this.

"Fuck Merlin," Sirius sighed, running a hand through his hair. "Just… stop? Please?"

Harry nodded. Sirius reached over to grab his chin, tilting his head up to look at him.

"Say it. Promise you won't leave the school anymore without permission."

Harry hesitated, because it was a promise he could never keep and he wasn't sure he wanted to lie to Sirius anymore than he already was.

His hesitation was too long. Sirius dropped his hand, drawing back.

"Get out," he said, sounding tired.

"What?"

"You heard me. Get out. I was willing to work on this, to give you some leeway, but if you can't even meet me halfway and agree to something perfectly reasonable, then just get out."

Harry stared at him. Sirius face twisted furiously.

"Get the fuck out!"

Harry fled.


	44. Chapter 44

**Chapter 44**

The next morning, Harry briefly forgot about Sirius as he stood before the noticeboard in the Slytherin common room and stared thoughtfully at a new notice that'd gone up in the night.

 _APPARITION LESSONS_  
 _If you are seventeen years of age, or will turn seventeen on or before the 31st August next, you are eligible for a twelve-week course of Apparition Lessons from a Ministry of Magic Apparition instructor._  
 _Please sign below if you would like to participate._  
 _Cost: 12 Galleons._

"Not like you need them," Draco said softly as he signed his own name to the list. Harry hummed a quiet agreement, but he couldn't help thinking of how different his teleporting felt to side-along Apparition. He thought of asking Sirius if Apparating oneself felt the same, then remembered they weren't talking. Maybe he could ask James. If he said it did, then Harry would take the lessons.

 _I think you should take them anyway,_ the voice said as he set off for breakfast. _And I think you should suppress your magic while you do._

Harry stopped short. "What?"

Draco, who hadn't realised Harry stopped, turned and look back at him. "Harry?"

Harry waved at him to shut up, stepping aside as some of their housemates headed up the corridor. He leant against the wall, closing his eyes.

 _You're as incompetent as everyone else with your magic suppressed,_ the voice explained. _You have to practice a spell to perfect it. You still haven't got those tattoos, despite my insistence—_

It had suggested going to a Muggle tattoo parlour during the winter holiday.

 _—which means you're still in danger. Knowing how to Apparate with your magic suppressed could save your life._

"Harry!"

He snapped his eyes open. Draco stood right before him, looking worried.

"What?"

"What are you doing?"

"Thinking."

"About what?"

"Apparition," Harry said, starting down the corridor again, Draco falling into step beside him. "Also things that terrify me."

Draco gave him a worried, questioning look and Harry explained his idea. ( _My idea,_ the voice muttered grumpily.) Draco's worried expression eased as he heard it.

"I think it's a good idea," he said afterwards, as they sat down to breakfast. "But how are you going to suppress your magic?"

Harry rubbed his wrists, thinking of metal shackles and leather cuffs. Just imagining them around his wrists made him shudder, but as long as they weren't enchanted, as long as he could take them off at will, then he thought he could handle wearing them for the length of an Apparition lesson. He'd ask Dumbledore if he still had the cuffs when he saw him that evening.

Sirius wasn't at breakfast that morning, nor did he turn up to their Defence class. James taught it himself, snapping at the students, glaring at Harry, and taking points for the slightest little thing.

"What the hell was his problem?" Draco asked Harry as soon as class was out. As the students went their separate ways for break, Harry heard Hannah Abbott saying to Susan Bones, "It was like having Snape back!"

Harry doubted either man would appreciate the comparison.

"I told you Sirius and me argued yesterday," Harry answered Draco.

"What you told me was Sirius was an absolutely wanker."

"Detention, Malfoy."

Harry and Draco spun. James stood behind them, looking at them both with cold hatred. Harry dropped his gaze to the floor.

"An evening with Filch should teach you to speak about your professors with respect."

Draco grit his teeth. "Yes, sir."

"Now move on before I take points for loitering in the halls."

"Tosser," Draco muttered, but waited until James was out of earshot to do so.

* * *

Harry only realised at quarter to eight that he couldn't go to Dumbledore's office via the fireplace in Sirius and James' room. He seriously considered flying up to Dumbledore's window from the outside and knocking on it for Dumbledore to let him in, amused by the thought of Dumbledore's reaction, but in the end he simply wandered up to the seventh floor, turned invisible when no one was looking, and Wished the gargoyle to step aside while the corridor was empty. He made himself visible again on the ride up the moving staircase and knocked on the door.

Dumbledore didn't look surprised to see him coming through it. Harry assumed Sirius, or perhaps James, had mentioned something to him, but he was just glad he wouldn't have to explain things himself. Dumbledore didn't ask anything, just brought his Pensieve to the desk.

"I have two memories to share with you tonight," he said as Harry came closer. "Both obtained with enormous difficulty, and the second of them is, I think, the most important I have collected."

 _Are we actually going to learn something useful now then?_

Harry ignored the voice and bent over to enter the Pensieve. They were back at the Gaunt home, which was even more rundown than in the first memory Dumbledore had shared with him, this time in a memory of Morfin. Merope and her father were gone, leaving Morfin slouched miserably in a worn-out armchair with his father's ring on his hand.

When the door crashed open and the teenage Tom Riddle stepped through, Harry had a sudden flashback of lying on a cold hard floor with that face peering down at him, and something in him shivered.

The two spoke in parseltongue—it seemed to be Morfin's favoured language, never speaking in English—and Harry translated for Dumbledore. Riddle had come seeking his grandfather, who was dead, but Morfin mentioned the Muggle family named Riddle that lived across the village. This, Harry gathered, was when Tom Riddle found out his parentage. All he'd had to go on before was the knowledge that he was named for his father and grandfather.

Harry wondered, feeling a cold pit forming in his stomach, what Riddle had felt when he discovered his father was nothing more than a common Muggle, the very thing he'd grown to hate—wondered if he felt that stinging betrayal and anger that Harry had felt when he discovered Snape was his father.

The memory ended abruptly in darkness, startling Harry. As soon as he was out of the Pensieve he turned to Dumbledore and asked, "What happened?"

"Voldemort Stunned him. Morfin could not remember anything from that point forwards. The next thing he recalls is waking up the next morning, Marvolo's ring gone. That same morning, three dead bodies were found in the Riddle house across the way—Tom Riddle senior, and his elderly parents. The Muggle authorities were baffled, but the Ministry knew instantly that this was a magical death. Morfin, who already had a record for attacking one of the dead Muggles, was arrested after making a full confession and spent the rest of his life in Azkaban."

"He killed them?" Harry said, frowning. "Why? I mean, I get that he was a Muggle-hater, but just out of the blue like that?"

Dumbledore smiled. "Morfin Gaunt didn't kill them. Voldemort did."

"He killed his own father?"

"I believe so. We cannot know for certain, but I think it's safe to assume that Voldemort stupefied his uncle, took his wand, and killed his father and grandparents, eliminating the Riddle line he considered unworthy. He then returned to the Gaunt hovel and manipulated Morfin's memory to make him believe himself responsible, and left."

Harry sat down abruptly.

 _It's not the same._

"It—" He cut himself off, continuing in his mind. 'It doesn't matter. It's enough. He was manipulating people, changing their memories for his own good. I have to be better than that. I _am_ better than that. I didn't kill Snape. He killed his father but I didn't and mine did more than just abandon me. I'm better than him.'

 _That has nothing to do with Sirius,_ the voice said, but Harry was thinking of the weeks before his OWLs, when he'd made Remus forget his slip up about going to hell, of the Muggles in Bath and the potions class in second year and the whole school in first year. Of the fact that Sirius and all the rest had seen Harry kill his father only to have their memories altered.

 _You didn't do that,_ the voice insisted. _Voldemort did. Are you going to act against him?_

Harry flinched at the thought. But still… he wanted things to be better between him and Sirius. Yes, he was continually annoyed at Sirius' efforts to protect him, had lashed out and said unkind things and pushed Sirius away, but he didn't like it. Sirius was his godfather, he'd been the first person to offer Harry a real home, had been the first one to say he loved Harry.

Things might be better between Harry and Snape now, but Harry couldn't forget that Snape had fully intended to never reveal their relationship if he hadn't been forced to. Sirius, for all his flaws, had at least tried to be a parental figure to Harry. Whatever problems they had, Harry had to be grateful for that. If he _could_ do something to fix things between them, then _shouldn't_ he? Even if it meant defying Voldemort? It wasn't as if it was the first time; he'd been defying Voldemort from the moment he faked Snape's death.

"Harry?"

He jumped, blinked, looked up. He'd completely forgotten he was sitting in Dumbledore's office. "Sorry. Thinking."

"Anything you'd care to share?"

Harry shook his head. Dumbledore didn't look appeased, so he said, "Just some stuff about my dad. Didn't you have another memory to show me?"

Dumbledore looked at him for another moment, but thankfully didn't ask for Harry to speak his mind. He added another memory to the Pensieve and they dived into it. Remembering Dumbledore's remark about it being the most important, Harry braced himself for something terrible, but they appeared in Slughorn's office, at the end of one of his Slug Club meetings. Harry couldn't imagine what was so important they might find out here, but he watched as Riddle hung back to talk to Slughorn after everyone else was dismissed.

"Sir, I wanted to ask you something."

"Ask away, then, m'boy, ask away…"

"Sir, I wondered what you know about… about Horcruxes?"

The memory went smoky then—not dark like Morfin's had, but an odd fog descended over it and over the top Slughorn's voice said loudly, _"I don't know anything about Horcruxes and I wouldn't tell you if I did! Now get out of here at once and don't let me catch you mentioning them again!"_

"That memory has been meddled with," Dumbledore told Harry when they left the Pensieve. "Professor Slughorn has tampered with his own memory."

"Why?"

"Shame. He has attempted to show himself in a better light, but has done so poorly. It proves that the real memory is underneath. And now I am giving you homework: I would like you to convince Professor Slughorn to divulge the real memory."

 _That'll hardly be a challenge._

"Feel free to come to me as soon as you have it," Dumbledore said, and then dismissed him. Harry started to leave, but a reminder from the voice made him stop and turn back, prompting Dumbledore to raise his eyebrows questioningly.

"Professor, I was wondering if you still had those cuffs you put on me during my first year."

Dumbledore's eyebrows dropped, the crease between them deepening as he looked at Harry over his half-moon glasses.

"May I enquire as to why you're asking?"

Harry explained his idea and Dumbledore's expression eased, a smile spreading across his face instead.

"An excellent idea. However, are you certain you'll be comfortable with your magic suppressed?"

"As long as I can take the cuffs off myself, whenever I want," Harry said, hoping it was true. The thought of suppressing his magic did make his pulse pick up uncomfortably, but he thought he could manage.

"Very well. I'll send the cuffs to you in time for the first lesson."

"Thank you, professor," Harry said, and left.

He exited through the door again, turning invisible on the ride down the moving staircase. He lingered at the bottom a while, watching through the gargoyle for Professor Trelawney to pass by so he could leave unnoticed, then headed down through the castle. He made himself visible on the sixth floor, and on the fourth he went to Sirius and James' rooms. He peeked through the door to check they were in and saw them both there, laying side by side on the floor and marking homework. At least, James appeared to be; Sirius was making two quills battle like swords.

Taking a deep breath, Harry knocked on the door. James came to answer it and immediately scowled when he saw Harry.

"What do you want?"

"Can I talk to Sirius, please?"

"He's not here."

Harry swivelled his blue eye pointedly in Sirius' direction, normal eye remaining on James' face. Sirius sat up, sighing.

"James, let him in."

Scowl deepening, James stood aside to let Harry pass. Harry only entered far enough for the door to shut behind him, hands tugging nervously at his sleeves. Sirius wouldn't look at him, staring at the wall somewhere beyond Harry, and James wasn't make things any easier.

"What do you want?" Sirius asked glumly.

"Can we talk? Alone?"

"We can talk, but James stays. If you don't like that, tough."

Harry glanced at James, away again. Sirius still wouldn't look at him, so he stared down at his hands.

"I need to tell you something."

"All I want to hear from you is a promise to stop being so reckless."

"I _can't_."

Sirius' gaze cut to him finally. "Then get out."

"Sirius—"

"I don't want to hear it! There's no excuse for the way you've been behaving! Just get—"

"I'm a Death Eater!"

Silence.

Then: "Don't be stupid."

"Sirius—"

Sirius surged to his feet and Harry backed up a step. "Do you think this is funny?" he asked furiously. "You think it's amusing to joke about that?"

Harry knew nothing he said would convince Sirius, so he just made a Wish. Sirius and James both staggered as if he'd physically struck them, and Harry backed up another step, felt the wall against his shoulders, and braced himself to run in an instant.

It was only when James cried out and clutched at his head that Harry realised he may have just made a massive mistake. He hadn't been specific with his Wish, but he'd completely forgotten that, according to Dumbledore, making James remember the time of their kidnapping would drive him crazy.

It was too late now. Sirius dropped onto the sofa, hands clenching against the cushions, staring at Harry, who fixed his gaze on the floor.

"You…" Sirius began, and Harry braced himself for insults and vicious hatred about 'killing' Snape, but then James yelled—a wordless noise of pure fury, and Harry jumped as he threw a Blasting Hex so powerful it completely destroyed the essays he'd been marking earlier, as well as the quill and inkpot with them, and scorched the carpet beneath.

"James!" Sirius leapt up, reaching for James, but stopped when James whirled on him, wand pointed shakily at Sirius' throat. His teeth were grit, lips drawn back in a snarl, and for a moment it really looked like he might throw a Blasting Hex at Sirius, too.

Then he jerked his arm down. "I'm _not_ ," he snarled.

"Not what?" Sirius asked, sounding as baffled as Harry felt.

"Not _his_." He grabbed at the collar of his robes, tearing them as he pulled it down, and lifted the tip of his wand to his collarbone. "I'm not his fucking property!"

"Don't you dare!"

James froze. The hand holding his wand twitched.

"Put it down," Sirius ordered, and James twitched again then dropped his wand. Sirius crouched slowly to pick it up, tucking it in his pocket. He drew his own and cast a quick _reparo_ on James' robes, then pulled him into a hug. James clutched at him, burying his face in Sirius' shoulder.

"I'm not his," he said, voice muffled, then said something else too quiet for Harry to catch, but it made Sirius stiffen momentarily. He patted James' back a couple of times then drew back.

"Don't ever hurt yourself, Prongs. Not because of that man; he's not worth it."

James nodded. Sirius reached a hand towards his collar but stopped short of touching him, jaw clenching briefly.

"We'll figure out something to do about it, alright?"

James nodded again and Sirius turned to Harry, whose relief at seeing that James didn't appear to be insane gave way to tension.

"As for you," Sirius began, then stopped. He didn't seem to know what to say and eventually he just sighed heavily and dropped down to the sofa. "I don't know what the fuck to do with you."

That was a better reaction than Harry might have hoped for. "Do you hate me?"

Sirius didn't answer. James sat by him.

"Sirius, you don't know what he went through," he said softly.

"Do you?"

James glanced at Harry, expression thick with pity, and Harry realised that he knew exactly what Frederick Nott had done to him. Harry looked away, wrapping his arms around himself.

"I heard it," James said to Sirius. "I never saw him, but I heard him screaming. He suffered that for a week, Sirius. He could have made it stop at any time by agreeing to join them, but he didn't until…"

"Until Remus was dead."

Harry flinched as if struck. He'd expected anger at his being a Death Eater, hatred for being a killer, but he hadn't expected to be blamed for that. He might have spent six months blaming himself, but to actually hear it from someone else was more painful that he'd imagined.

"Shit. Harry, I—I didn't mean it like that."

"Yeah, you did," Harry said quietly, not looking at him. "It's okay. Someone had to say it eventually. It's not like I didn't know it was my fault."

"It's not!"

From the corner of his eyes, Harry saw Sirius stand up and rapidly take several steps towards him, but Harry flinched and Sirius stopped. Harry hadn't meant to, wasn't even sure why he did, but when he glanced up, Sirius' expression was guilt-ridden.

"I fucked up, didn't I?" he said brokenly, and then collapsed. It was like his legs just couldn't hold him up anymore. He dropped to a sitting position, bending over, hands planting on the floor, head dropping and hair falling to hide his face.

On the sofa, James sat like a coiled spring, as if he wanted to throw himself down by Sirius and wrap him in a bear hug, but was restraining himself. Harry just stood and watched.

"I don't," Sirius said still in that broken voice. "I don't hate you and I don't blame you for Remus' death. It wasn't your fault. You tried to get in the way and the curse wasn't even aimed for him. Voldemort's the only one to blame for what happened."

Harry hadn't believed that before. He certainly didn't now.

Sirius lifted his head and Harry looked away.

"I'm sorry, kid. Harry. What I said yesterday—throwing you out—it was out of line. I shouldn't have yelled at you and I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry, and I'm sorry for just now, making it seem like I blamed you, because I don't, I really don't."

"He doesn't," James said. "He doesn't hate you either, I can feel it."

"What does he feel?" Harry asked, wondering if James was more honest about it.

"Sad, hurt, guilty." He looked from Harry to Sirius, who didn't look around but gave a tiny nod, and James went on. "He's frustrated and confused because he hates Death Eaters, but he loves you and he wants to be angry that you're one of them now but he saw— _we_ saw—what happened to cause that and he knows you can't be any happier about it than he is, but there's nothing he can do about it, and he wants to say that you don't have to obey Voldemort, that you can betray him and Sirius will gladly pay the price, but he knows that he can't because it's not just his life on the line. You killed Snape for us, to protect us, even after Snape got himself caught trying to help you. He wants to be happy that you protected us, that you chose us over Snape, but he knows he can't say that because Snape was your father." He paused for breath, then continued, voice lowering slightly. "And he loves you. Even now, he loves you."

Both Harry and Sirius were staring at him by then. James just sat there, jaw set, saying nothing more. Eventually Sirius looked back around at Harry and shrugged.

"What he said."

Both men looked at Harry now and Harry looked away, trying to figure out how to respond to all that. It'd been easier when he only had to deal with Sirius' anger. More unpleasant, certainly, but easier. When he had to face the fact that Sirius felt just as many jumbled emotions as Harry did, that he was flawed and prone to misjudgement and really was probably just trying to do his best, even if his best wasn't always what Harry wanted… it made Harry want to forgive him, and forgiveness was hard.

But Sirius deserved it. His emotions had made him act badly and Harry couldn't fault someone for that. His emotions made him destroy windows and rot carpets and kill plantlife; that made poor decision making look a bit better in comparison. Sirius was trying his best under a tidal wave of emotions, and Harry knew exactly how that felt.

Even so, Harry couldn't do it, not yet, not until he'd heard one more thing from Sirius.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, still hugging himself, hands clenching on his arms.

"About what?" Sirius asked.

"Me. I'm a Death Eater. What are you going to do about it?"

Sirius straightened up, sitting back on his heels. He didn't answer immediately, considering the question with all the severity it warranted, and Harry didn't know whether to be glad for it or hate him for the apprehension that it made coil in his stomach and the goosebumps it sent over his flesh.

"Nothing," Sirius said eventually, sounding none too happy about it. "It's done, and it's been six months. There's nothing I can do now. There was never anything I could do."

"Are you going to tell Professor Dumbledore? Or anyone else?"

"I want to."

"Please don't," Harry begged, already knowing he'd take the voice's instant suggestion of erasing their memories again. He knew it would come out eventually, but not now. Not yet.

"Why?"

"What good will it do?"

"Dumbledore's head of the Order. He should know you're working against us."

Harry winced at that. Sirius looked away, clenched his hands on this thighs.

"I won't," he said, sounding bitter and guilty. "But I don't want to know what you're doing, I don't want to know what Voldemort asks you to do, I don't want to know when he calls you. I know what you are, but I can't know anything more."

Harry nodded. He'd never have told him anyway, but it still hurt a little. It made Sirius' love conditional, dependant on Harry's actions. Which was only fair, wasn't it? He couldn't expect Sirius to love someone who tortured and murdered people, even if that someone was his godson.

Sirius got to his feet, grimacing slightly as something popped. He shook out a leg and looked at Harry. "If I come give you a hug, will you flinch from me again?"

"No," Harry said, and hoped Sirius didn't notice how tense he was as he approached. But he did refrain from flinching and even returned the hug, relaxing slightly as Sirius pressed his cheek to the top of Harry's head.

"I am sorry," Sirius said again, quietly. Harry wasn't sure what he was apologising for exactly, but he didn't ask.

Sirius drew back with a sigh. "It's almost curfew. You should get going. I'll walk you down."

James leapt up from the sofa as if blasted off it. "I'll come too."

Sirius turned to him, opening his mouth to speak, then stopped when he saw James' face. He smiled softly and brushed his hand against James'. All the tension in James eased then, draining out of him, and he smiled back.

* * *

"How was it?" Draco asked when Harry got back to the common room, eying Harry worriedly as he came up to the chair Draco was sat in.

"I talked to Sirius."

"You did? I thought you were having a lesson."

"I did, but then I talked to Sirius. We're all good again."

Draco nodded. "Good. What about the lesson?"

"Nothing that interesting. I'll tell you tomorrow. I'm shattered."

Draco nodded and grabbed his wrist to tug him down enough to kiss him, then murmured a goodnight and Harry headed back to the dorm. Between the poor night's sleep, the emotional turmoil of the day, and the simple fact that Mondays were his busiest day schedule-wise, he was about ready to collapse. Not even the five chapters he had to read about Cyrus the Great was enough to keep him from changing into his pyjamas, crawling into bed, and falling straight to sleep.

* * *

Harry forgot about Dumbledore's assignment for him until Potions class on Wednesday. They were supposed to figure out antidotes to poisons Slughorn handed out, but that wasn't something Snape's notes in _Advanced Potion Making_ could help with. All he wrote on the matter was _Just shove a bezoar down their throat_ , which was terribly unhelpful as far as brewing was concerned, but when Harry showed one at the end of class, his boldness impressed Slughorn. Hermione was furious that he managed to come out top of the class yet again; knowing who the Half-Blood Prince was didn't make her any more amicable about what he did for Harry's marks in Potions.

There was a third year class after their lesson so he didn't approach Slughorn about the memory until classes were finished, going up to Slughorn's office after Charms.

"Ah, Harry, always a pleasure! What can I do for you, m'boy?"

Harry silently put up Silencing and Locking Charms and moved to sit in the chair opposite Slughorn's desk.

"I wanted to ask you about Horcruxes."

Slughorn's reaction was instant. The blood drained from his face, a sweat broke out on his brow, and when he spoke his voice was suddenly hoarse.

"Dumbledore put you up to this. Dumbledore's shown you that—that memory. Well? Hasn't he?"

"Yes. I need the undoctored version."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I gave Dumbledore the memory. I don't know anything— _anything_ —about Horcruxes. Now I'm very busy and I think you should go."

"I will, but first: Give me the real memory, then forget doing so and forget I ever asked for it."

Without any further complaint, Slughorn fished a small vial from his desk drawer, lifted his wand to his temple, and pulled it away with a shining strand of memory. He deposited it in the vial and handed it over, and then shook his head and blinked at Harry.

"Terribly sorry, I think I drifted off for a moment. What was it you wanted?"

Harry smiled disarmingly. "I wanted to confess that figuring out antidotes seems a bit beyond me, sir. I was hoping you'd give me a little extra help with them."

"Of course, of course. I'm glad you came to me. Now…"

Half an hour later, he left with Slughorn's memory and a slightly better understanding of how to create antidotes. As Dumbledore had said to come to him as soon as Harry had the memory, Harry went up to the seventh floor, but as soon as he was in sight range of Dumbledore's office he looked through and found it empty. He still had his school bag with him, so he dug out a bit of parchment, wrote a quick note that he Wished up to the office, and then he headed down again.

Due to his lesson with Dumbledore on Monday, and then his talk with Sirius afterwards, Harry hadn't got any work done that evening. Somehow, that single day led to a boatload of work piling up. After a quick dinner, he gave Draco a kiss and an apology for abandoning him for another evening, collected up his books, and went to Sirius and James' rooms. Neither were there when he arrived, but Harry figured they wouldn't mind him doing some work in their sitting room while he waited to hear from Dumbledore.

He actually enjoyed the quiet privacy. He'd had a break from the school during the holiday, of course, but he'd still had Draco around for most of that time. It was nice to get an hour completely to himself, shut away in the quiet with just his books. Even the voice stayed quiet, letting him work in peace.

He was halfway through his Ancient Runes homework when the fireplace flared suddenly and Dumbledore's head appeared. Even through the flames Harry could see an eager gleam in his eye.

"Please come through, Mr Evans."

Harry quickly scribbled out a few words as Dumbledore vanished, then left his stuff and went through the fireplace. Dumbledore was already setting his Pensieve on the desk and Harry passed over the vial of memory from Slughorn. Dumbledore eagerly poured it into the Pensieve and they both bent over and fell into the memory.

Shortly later they came back out and Harry dropped into a chair. He clutched at the arms, the wood digging into his fingers.

 _Horcruxes,_ the voice whispers in awe. _That's what we need to do. This is how we get out of the deal. They can't take your soul if it's split in half. This is it!_

Harry swallowed, forced himself not to respond, not to think about it. He couldn't think about that now, not here, not with Dumbledore in the room.

"He did it, didn't he?" he said, glad to hear his voice come out steadily. "He made a Horcrux. That's why he didn't die the night he tried to kill me and the spell backfired. A bit of his soul was somewhere else, safe."

"A bit… and more. You heard him: Voldemort wanted to know what would happen to someone with more than one Horcrux. As far as I know, as far as Voldemort knew, it has never been done before." Dumbledore paused, settled in the chair behind his desk, expression solemn and yet also pleased. "Four years ago, I received what I believed to be certain proof that Voldemort had split his soul."

He opened his desk draw and pulled out a book that made Harry's breath catch—Tom Riddle's old diary, still with a wicked hole through the centre.

"That was one?" Harry said a little weakly. "That actually had a bit of his soul in it?"

"I'm afraid so."

"But it's not a Horcrux anymore, right?" Harry said. "I mean, Dad stabbed it with a basilisk fang. That's pretty destructive."

Dumbledore watched him over his glasses. "It certainly is, and destroying a Horcrux is a difficult task as the piece of soul inside fortifies the object, making it impervious to many spells. The basilisk's venom is one of the things potent enough to destroy it."

"But there's still six more Horcruxes out there?"

Dumbledore's gaze flicked briefly down to the diary and then back up to Harry. "Five. Voldemort split his soul seven times. That is, he made six Horcruxes whilst the seventh piece of his soul, however maimed, continues to reside within his body."

"How are we meant to find five more Horcruxes?" Harry asked. "They could be…"

 _Trophies,_ the voice interrupted. _Remember? He liked to collect trophies. A proper little hoarder._

"They're not just anything," Harry corrected himself thoughtfully. "They're important things. Important to him, like the diary."

"Yes. I have my suspicions as to what he used for a few, which we will explore at a later date, but I am sure of at least one—do you recall Marvolo Gaunt's ring? The one Morfin inherited?"

Harry nodded, recalling the big ugly thing Marvolo had waved at Bob Ogden. Riddle had been wearing it in the most recent memory when he asked Slughorn about Horcruxes.

"The night the Riddle family were murdered, Morfin lost that ring. It was the one thing he was concerned about when he was arrested, and it was never found. As we just saw, Voldemort took it for himself."

"You think he made it into a Horcrux?"

Dumbledore gazed at him over his glasses. "I think," he said sombrely, "that when we saw him just now, he already had."

"His father's death. He used it to make the Horcrux," Harry guessed, and Dumbledore nodded.

Harry's gaze dropped, falling on the mutilated diary on the desk. He wondered if Voldemort felt it when a Horcrux was destroyed, and wondered more what it would feel like if he could. He wanted to know when Dumbledore would show him more about this, but didn't ask, afraid of sounding too interested in such dark magic.

Instead, feeling the impatience of the voice in his head, he just asked, "Is that all for tonight?"

Dumbledore looked at him for a moment, blue eyes dark and thoughtful behind his glasses, and then nodded. "Yes. You may go."

* * *

Sirius and James still weren't in their rooms when Harry went back through. He quickly collected the homework he left on their sofa, shoved it into his bag, and then went to the window. It was just big enough for him to climb out and he did, turning invisible as he went and making sure to push it shut behind him before he flew straight towards the school perimeter. As soon as he was past the anti-Apparition protections, he teleported away, reappearing over Lake Windermere.

The lake was his refuge from everything and everyone. Certainly he could find a quiet spot at Hogwarts, or go home if he really wanted to get away, but those places had too much association with other people. The lake was his. It might be a massive tourist spot, but it was the one place he associated with no one else in his personal life.

He flew to one of the smaller islands, dropped down between the trees, and threw off his bag as he began pacing.

"That's dark magic. Really, really dark."

 _Who cares? This is your SOUL we're talking about._

"Exactly. I mean, what happens to me if I split it? Am I going to become an ugly snake-man like the Dark Lord?"

 _I think we can sacrifice our looks for the sake of not going to hell, but we probably won't. He split his seven times; we only need to do it once._

"The hellhounds might still be able to find it. They might be able to track down the Horcrux and destroy it."

 _No, we read about this. Goofer dust—it repels hellhounds. Put the Horcrux somewhere safe and trap it in a circle of goofer dust and some demon repelling sigils. Wish it all to stay in place, keep it safe, we'll be fine._

"Except when the hounds kill me—kill this body—I'll end up that weird spirit thing the Dark Lord was when he tried to kill me the first time. I don't want to become that."

 _You don't want to go to hell, either. This is it, this is what we've been looking for. The Assistant might have said there's no breaking the deal, but this isn't breaking it, it's just exploiting a loophole._

"I don't know. I really don't like the idea of living as a weird spirit thing."

 _So get someone to remake you like the Dark Lord did. He came back, we could too._

"Yeah, sure, I'll just steal some of Dad's bone and get one of my many, many servants to cut off their hand for me and steal some of the Dark Lord's blood for a… a… whatever the hell that potion's called. That'll be piss easy, I'm sure. Not to mention who the hell would do that? We can't tell anyone about splitting my soul. Sirius would throw a fit. I doubt even Draco or Dad could handle me doing that."

 _I'm sure we can find someone to help you out, but you're worrying unnecessarily. We're only talking about avoiding hell for now._

"This is big. It's dangerous, it's risky. We don't even know how to do it, not really. If it was just a matter of killing someone then my soul would be split half a dozen times already—and that's only if it's humans only. If it includes vampires…"

 _It wouldn't. You heard Slughorn—it's about murder. Wilful, cold-blooded murder, I'd bet. The vampires were self-defence, and everyone else was forced really. They probably don't count either. It'd have to be someone you chose, someone you_ _ **want**_ _to kill._

"Why do I get the feeling you've already figured out who that would be?"

 _Haven't you?_

Harry didn't answer that. He didn't want to think about any willingness he might have to commit murder under his own volition. "We can't. Not without researching it first at least."

 _Somehow I doubt you'll find anything on Horcruxes in the library. Not even Hogwarts would stock books on this kind of dark magic. But I'd wager Dumbledore's got something. What's the bet he found books on Horcruxes the moment he heard about them?_

"You want me to steal from Dumbledore?"

 _Don't be an idiot. Just Wish for them._

"Okay, one, I've never Wished for something I didn't know for certain existed unless I was creating it, and two, he'd still notice they're gone."

 _Stop being so close-minded! Wish for a duplicate. If the books exist, you can get them. If they don't, the Wish will fail and we'll have to figure something else out. The Room of Requirement might give us something, actually._

"Fine, I'll get the books but that doesn't mean I'm doing this. I'm trying to be less like the Dark Lord, not more like him."

 _He split his soul to avoid death; you're splitting your soul to save yourself._

"I'm still trying to avoid death."

 _You're trying to postpone death; there's a difference. Stop splitting hairs and start researching._

"It can wait. I have homework to do. A lot of homework."

 _This is more important than homework! Your soul is at stake!_

"No. Homework first, evil dark magic second."

* * *

It occurred to Harry, when he was telling Draco about the latest lesson with Dumbledore, that if Draco ever came face to face with Voldemort, they were screwed. Given that Draco had been in Voldemort's presence once before, and that his father was one of the top Death Eaters, it seemed uncomfortably plausible that Draco would.

Draco would have to learn Occlumency. Harry didn't mention it right then, unsure what to do about it. He wasn't sure he could teach it himself, partly because he wasn't sure he did it normally, what with his magic being so unusual, and partly because he didn't know Legilimency. Draco would need a normal teacher for this, but who was he supposed to go to? The only possibilities Harry knew were Dumbledore and Snape. Snape was out for obvious reasons, and Harry couldn't have Dumbledore rooting around in Draco's head, discovering that Harry was a Death Eater and had told Draco all about what he was learning with Dumbledore.

Draco was clearly unnerved by the information about the Horcruxes. Harry told him about it that night, after his lesson with Dumbledore and his trip to Lake Windermere, creeping into Draco's bed once the other boys were shut behind their curtains. He ignored the voice, which had kept quiet while Harry did his homework earlier but insisted that if he had time to cuddle his boyfriend then he had time to research Horcruxes.

"He's really immortal then," Draco said, "unless you can find the Horcruxes."

"Hopefully next time Dumbledore will show me what they are." He squirmed closer, head tucked under Draco's chin and arms wrapped around him. "Hey, Draco?" he said quietly.

"Hm?"

"We've never actually talked about me killing him."

"What do you mean?" Harry could hear the frown in his voice.

"I mean… well, you grew up believing his ideals and you even said you'll probably become a Death Eater and your father's one of his favourites and I just… do you even want me to kill him?"

"Yes," Draco answered without hesitation. Harry said nothing and perhaps Draco read his scepticism because he insisted, "I do. I'm not saying I'm going to start vying for Muggleborn rights and…" He paused, clearly nervous about his words, but admitted, "I do still think purebloods are better than Muggleborns no matter how intelligent Granger proves herself to be, but I want the Dark Lord dead."

"Why?"

"Because I don't like him."

"Why?" Harry pushed. "You agree with his ideals still."

Draco squirmed, unhappy about having his beliefs so thoroughly examined. "Yes, but not his methods. I don't like what he's done to you and I realise now he's not the great lord my father always made him out to be. I want him dead."

Harry said nothing to that, but he tilted his head to kiss at Draco's throat, and they slept.


	45. Chapter 45

**Chapter 45**

Harry's panic attacks weren't really an issue during the first term back at Hogwarts. His confrontation with Frederick Nott was the only time he had a major one, and the minor ones were manageable. If he couldn't think himself out of it before it began (a skill he learnt with Occlumency, but which admittedly rarely worked), then he excused himself to somewhere private to wait for it to pass.

Classes were a bigger problem. He'd worried about what he was supposed to do if one happened during a lesson—worried so much it actually caused one—but he decided that he would just Wish for no one to pay attention. He would be fine as long as it wasn't a major one—or so he'd thought.

When it actually happened for the first time, during Transfiguration, he realised that there was no way he could stand to be in the classroom, surrounded by students, without it developing into a major attack. He couldn't even make the Wish like he'd planned—what if it didn't work? What if his magic messed up like it did during seizures occasionally? Even if the Wish did work, what if he couldn't keep his magic contained during the panic attack and it lashed out at someone?

He'd had to run from the classroom, ignoring the stunned cry of Professor McGonagall and the shocked murmurs of his classmates. He threw himself into the first empty classroom he found and stood at the centre, arms wrapped around himself, trembling and battling to keep his magic under control.

When it'd stopped, he found Draco standing in the doorway behind him, leant against the frame, arms folded over his chest. He didn't say anything, just looked at Harry worriedly.

"How many points did I lose?" Harry had asked.

"None. But she said if you've not gone to the hospital wing then you have to come back or it's a detention."

Harry hadn't want to face his classmates after what just happened.

"I'll take the detention," he'd said.

But he didn't get one. Draco stayed with him for the rest of the period, but afterwards, once they'd listened to the rest of the school pass through the corridors to wherever they planned to spend the two hours before dinner was served, Draco tugged Harry up and prodded him in the direction of McGonagall's office

"You know it'll happen again," he'd said. "I know you like McGonagall, for whatever weird reason, and she seems to like you, so tell her what's going on."

"I could just Wish her to forget about it," Harry suggested, but Draco prodded his back and Harry had reluctantly gone and explained everything to McGonagall. She'd been perfectly understanding, promised to talk to the rest of the staff, and he was permitted to excuse himself from classes if a panic attack struck again.

"You're not the first one to have this problem," McGonagall had told him kindly. It hadn't made Harry feel any better about the whole thing, especially not about giving the students more fuel for their gossip.

But that had been months ago. In the time since, Harry had thought they were getting better. He had fewer during November and December than he had in September or October, and he hadn't had any since Christmas. He had fewer nightmares, the flashbacks of his torture didn't come so often, and he wasn't half as twitchy about people as he had been several months ago. Unexpected touches still tended to make him flinch, but he was better. He was recovering. He could even handle listening to Theo Nott without wanting to hex the boy's tongue out.

It helped that Theo was a loner, rarely spending time even with his dormmates. They were the only two sixth years taking History of Magic, but Theo thankfully seemed unconcerned by Harry always taking a seat on the opposite side of the classroom to him, and Binns kept to his lecture-only method of teaching, so there was never any reason for Theo to speak. In their other classes, he never volunteered answers, only speaking when called on by the teachers; and as the sixth years were all expected to learn silent casting, Harry didn't even have to listen to him practising spells. As such, Harry had grown to deal with him.

Or at least, he'd thought so. He _believed_ it, which made it that much worse when it all went bottom's up.

It wasn't even intentional on Theo's part; his comment was said in complete innocence and he couldn't know the effect it would have on Harry. It was Thursday evening, the day after he found out about the Horxcruxes, and Harry was in the library, working on an essay for sixth year History of Magic on the role of magic in the establishment of the First Persian Empire. To his irritation, the one book that'd be most helpful to him, judging by the references in several others, had been checked out by someone else, a fact he lamented about when he returned to the table he shared with Draco, Hermione, and Neville, although all four of them were working on different subjects.

"I'm sure it'll turn up," Draco replied distractedly, frowning heavily at a thick Herbology book and scratching out an entire paragraph on his essay.

Harry huffed, slumping in his chair. He'd done all his other homework, having left History until last because it was always the easiest. Still, there was nothing to be done about it right then, so he reached into his bag for Nyneve's journal. He'd taken to carrying it around with him so he could translate it at times like this when the opportunity arose.

He was finally reaching the really interesting bits: Nyneve had invented inferi, by accident, as well as a number of other less functional zombie types, but couldn't figure out how to recover the body more than that. Her endgame was to bring her younger sister back to life, and she'd determined that she needed to learn how to recover the soul. With her work on physical reincarnation currently halted from lack of progress, she focused now on soul magic. This also led to her relationship with Merlin turning sour; he considered soul magic an abomination and believed Nyneve's own soul would be corrupted if she continued on her path.

But just as he opened the journal, someone came up beside him, held out a book, and said, "Did I hear that right, Evans? You want this?"

 _That room—cold floorboards underneath him—a heavy weight over the top—Snape in the corner, shouting—a thick hand pressed against his lower abdomen—and that voice… "Is that right, Evans? You want this?"_

"Harry!"

He flinched violently. Jerked his head around, focused. He stood back from the table, chair knocked to the floor. Draco was just out of arm's reach, eyes wide, concerned and a little bit afraid, and Hermione and Neville were staring at him, stunned. People were muttering, a noise louder than normal for the library. Across from Harry, a bookshelf had lost several books, scattered across the floor below—where Theo was crumpled, groaning weakly.

"Harry—" Draco said again, but every inch of Harry was screaming to get out, get away, escape—

He fled. He didn't think about it, didn't care who saw him or what they might say. Blood was pounding through him, driving fear through his veins, and tears blurred his vision, but he didn't stop, didn't think, just kept hearing that voice and had to get away, to escape, to reach safety.

He hardly recalled leaving the castle or the grounds or teleporting away. He didn't wonder at the fact that, when he reappeared, it was inside Snape's living room. He collapsed to his hands and knees, not sobbing only because he couldn't breathe well enough to do so, but with tears streaming down his face. He couldn't even try to restrain his magic, could only kneel there, feeling like it was the beginning of the summer all over again, like it was two weeks since he'd been raped and not more than six months. Even Snape was the same, crouching before Harry in his pyjamas and dressing gown, pushing into Harry's unsettled mind and smoothing over thoughts and memories until the panic started to fade.

When it did, when he could breathe enough to actually cry properly, Harry collapsed against Snape's chest and sobbed, clutching at his robes. He felt Snape's arms hesitantly wrap around him then pat awkwardly at his back. He wasn't much good at this whole hugging thing, but Harry didn't care right then. A bad hug was better than no hug, and he needed it from Snape. The comfort of Draco—of a boyfriend or even just a friend—was no good. He needed a father's comfort.

Once his sobs reduced to hiccups, Snape asked quietly, "What happened?"

"I thought they would stop," Harry replied, not moving from his position. He felt as much as heard Snape sigh.

"They may, eventually."

"But I was better. I had sex." Later, he'd feel embarrassed for saying that to his father, but he was too upset then to feel embarrassed. "I did that and it was good and I thought it would be over, but then Theo Nott said one thing to me and I completely fell apart."

Snape sighed again, but understandingly this time. "It's not that simple. It's good that you were able to… have sex… and if you think you were improving then you likely were, but it doesn't change what happened to you, Harry. Nothing will suddenly make the effects of what happened go away. You were raped. You can recover from that—you _are_ recovering—but you can't undo it. Maybe one day there'll be a time that it doesn't bother you—" he sounded like he was trying to convince himself as much as Harry "—but there'll probably always be moments like this when something reminds you of it."

"It's not fair," Harry muttered into his chest, sniffing.

"Life usually isn't." He patted Harry's back a few more times, then said, "Could you please not use my dressing gown as a tissue, however?"

Harry finally pulled away from him, Wishing away the wet patch on Snape's clothes. "Sorry," he said, conjuring a tissue for himself.

"I'll survive."

Harry blew his nose, wiped his face, and looked around as he vanished the tissue, now starting to feel embarrassed about the whole thing. He and Snape weren't the kind that had this sort of comforting relationship, and even if they were, Harry thought sixteen was a bit old to be crying to one's father.

But his embarrassment fell forgotten as he blinked up at a large silver and blue birthday banner hung across one wall. Matching balloons were stuck at each end and streamers were strung across the bookcases.

"Is it your birthday?"

Snape's mouth twisted into the kind of scowl usually reserved for the truly horrendous. Harry hadn't seen that look since Gilderoy Lockhart's Valentine's Day.

"Yes," he bit out. "The Assistant felt it necessary to come by and decorate, and I can't get rid of the bloody things."

Harry laughed, not caring that it made Snape's expression darken. "I'm sorry. I didn't get you anything."

"I really don't mind. Can you get rid of them?"

"Probably," Harry said, still grinning. "But I think they're nice."

"Harry," Snape said warningly, but there was really nothing he could do.

"Is there anything you want? I wanted to get you a Christmas present, but I didn't know what to get you and now I didn't even know about your birthday."

"I don't want anything," Snape said, still irritated over the decorations. "I honestly don't care about my birthday or Christmas."

Harry couldn't see why he wouldn't, but if Snape wouldn't be helpful then there wasn't much he could do about it. "How old are you anyway?"

"Old enough. Shouldn't you be getting back to school?"

"Come on," Harry pushed. "Tell me. Are you forty? I should definitely get something if it's your fortieth birthday."

Snape spluttered. "I'm not forty!"

"Forty-five?" Harry said innocently. Snape glowered at him. "Fifty?"

Snape rolled his eyes and stood. "I'm thirty-seven, if you really must know."

Harry grinned, standing as well. "Okay."

Snape shot him a suspicious look. "What are you thinking?"

"Nothing."

Snape glared at him. Harry looked back innocently, thoughts of birthday cakes tucked behind Occlumency shields.

"Fine," Snape said eventually. "I don't want to know what you're thinking. It's probably safer that way. Get back to school, it's not even nine o'clock yet, someone will notice you're missing."

Harry's grin fell. Snape looked alarmed.

"What is it?"

"Um… I attacked Nott and ran out. They probably already noticed." He bit his lip, suddenly worried. Maybe he should just erase everyone's memories.

A finger jabbed him between the eyes. He crossed his eyes to look at it, then blinked and looked up.

"Don't," Snape said.

"Don't what?"

"Erase their memories."

Harry's jaw dropped. "How…?"

"I know you. You always look for the easy way out. I've told you before, you need to face the consequences of your actions."

Harry's shoulders slumped. "I'm gonna be in so much trouble. Sirius'll flip."

"You'll just have to deal with it."

Harry nodded, but his thoughts had moved on from Sirius. "I'll have to apologise to Nott."

Snape folded his arms over his chest. "What did you do to him?"

"Threw him across the library."

"Does he bother you much? He doesn't look a great deal like his father, as I recall."

Harry looked away, wrapping his arms around himself. "He sounds like him."

"Ah."

"I was… it bothered me more, at first. I'm better now, I am, and he hardly ever talks anyway, not to anyone, but…"

"Something he said today set you off."

Harry's hands clenched on his arms. " 'Is that right, Evans? You want this?' He was talking about a book, but it just…"

He shivered. Snape twitched, evidently recalling the saying himself, though Harry had no idea how it felt for him. Frederick Nott had said it to him, too, and grown furious when it didn't spur Snape into fighting like it did Harry. Harry still didn't know how Snape managed it.

"You didn't," Snape said sharply, moving around Harry towards the kitchen. "Neither of us did."

Harry followed him to the doorway, watching Snape dig out a bottle of vodka and a glass. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"Reminding you of… especially on your birthday."

Snape stared down at his shot glass, now full, one hand clenching on the bottle. "Don't," he said quietly. "Don't apologise. I remember it anyway, just as you do. We're neither of us likely to forget, but if you need to talk to me then talk to me. I've seen well enough what happens to children who bottle these things up; I don't want that to happen to you."

"What happens to them?"

Snape downed the drink in one gulp, setting the empty glass down and other hand twitching slightly as if he wasn't sure whether to pour another shot or not. He didn't look at Harry as he answered. "Suicide, at the worst."

"I won't do that," Harry promised. His death was coming early enough; he wouldn't kill himself and go to hell any sooner.

"Glad to hear it. Go on, get back to school."

"I'll see you later. Happy birthday," he added, before leaving.

It was only when he was walking back into Hogwarts that he thought to wonder what happened to an adult who bottled those things up. Would Snape commit suicide?

 _Probably not while you're alive,_ the voice said. _He owes you his life, and more than that. He's not likely to kill himself as long as you're around._

That wasn't encouraging. Harry remembered what Snape had said on Christmas Eve: _'I have no great desire to return to my life as it was before … The only thing here for me is you.'_ Did he plan to kill himself after Harry died? Did he wish Harry had killed him when Voldemort ordered it?

Harry couldn't imagine the mindset of that. Maybe it was because he knew where he was going when he died, or maybe it was just one of those things that most people couldn't imagine, but the idea of wanting to die was utterly foreign to him. He'd been willing to when he thought it would save his friends, and there had been moments when he thought dying might be a better alternative to torture, but he'd never _wanted_ to die.

Worries about Snape's potential suicidal thoughts took a backseat, however, as he approached the school gate and found Sirius standing there. Harry was invisible, but at the sight of Sirius he stopped, bit his lip, then made himself visible. Sirius straightened up from leaning against the columns flanking the gates.

"Come on," was all he said, jerking his head for Harry to follow and turning towards the castle. Harry followed, wondering just how much trouble he was in.

* * *

In the end, he got off fairly light, he thought. Fifty points from Slytherin, a single detention, and an apology to Theo. Harry worried what people would say about his wandless magic, but it quickly became clear that people hadn't even noticed. No one said anything about it, and Harry guessed they simply assumed he'd used his wand even if they didn't specifically recall it. Most of them hadn't focused on him and Theo until after the attack anyway, so it was understandable. His fleeing the school was also hardly noted; most of the protections on the school were to keep people out, not in.

Apologising to Theo was the hardest part for Harry. It was the first time he'd actually approached and spoken to him and it was nerve-wracking. Theo was in the hospital wing Thursday night—Harry's attack gave him concussion—so Harry spoke to him the next morning, while they waited for Binns to arrive at their History of Magic class. They usually sat on opposite sides of the classroom, but Harry left his seat to approach Theo's. Theo looked up at him warily, a look that normally made Harry feel guilty, but today only made him glad; if Theo was wary of him, he was less likely to try interacting with Harry in future.

Harry stood shuffling his feet, barely managing to meet Theo's eyes. "I'm sorry about yesterday. I didn't mean to attack you; you just startled me. I know that's not an excuse, though, and I'm sorry."

"Sure," Theo said.

There was a moment's silence. Harry wasn't sure what else to say. Wasn't Theo supposed to say something else? Accept the apology or tell him to fuck off? Or was Harry supposed to say more? He didn't see what; he wasn't about to grovel and make a bigger apology than he had. He wouldn't be able to make it convincing.

Theo cleared his throat. "It's fine," he said, and looked away, which Harry gathered was his dismissal. He returned to his seat, not sure that was how an apology was meant to go. But Theo seemed satisfied—or possibly just scared and wanted Harry to go away—and that was fine by Harry.

His detention was the next morning. He spent several hours helping Madam Pince with various tasks in the library, including repairing a few of books that'd been damaged when he threw Theo into the bookcase. He felt more guilty about the books than he did about Theo.

Pince finally let him go at lunchtime, after being there since breakfast, and Harry slogged down to the Great Hall to eat. After, he headed back up through the castle to the seventh floor, spurred on by the voice. It'd been bugging him all week and he didn't have the patience to ignore it anymore. He went to the Room of Requirement, which gave him a private study, put the strongest Locking Charm he could on the door, and sat at the large desk.

"Okay," he muttered. "Horcrux books. Give me a duplicate of any Horcrux books Albus Dumbledore has."

Three books promptly appeared in front of him.

 _Success,_ the voice said smugly. _Get reading._

It took most of the afternoon and he became less and less convinced with every thing he learnt. Murder split the soul, but the spell to actually create the Horcrux took more than that. He had to fast for three days beforehand, cut runes into himself, and consume the blood of the victim.

 _So now we need to choose a vessel. I think—_

Harry slammed the book shut. "No. I'm not doing it. This is—this is _evil_. It'll make my soul unstable and damaged and—"

 _And unable to be dragged to hell. Are you forgetting what we're trying to do?_

"What you're trying to do. I made my decision, I knew what would happen when I made the deal."

 _You were seven, you didn't understand the consequences. We don't want to go to hell._

"I don't want to turn myself into the Dark Lord either! I don't want to ruin my soul!"

 _What the fuck do you think will happen when you go to hell? Do you think it's going to be like the fortnight you spent in the hospital? Because it won't. It'll be worse. The demons will tear you to shreds. They'll fuck up your soul so much Bellatrix Lestrange will look like a saint. You think Nott was bad? The demons will be worse. I'm trying to save you from that! Whatever damage the Horcrux will do to your soul is nothing compared to what the demons will do._

It was probably true but he still didn't like the idea of ripping his soul in two.

Even so, rather than vanish the books, he Wished them to Snape's empty grave.

* * *

Severus didn't appreciate getting woken up by the Assistant grabbing his arm and then collapsing on the floor by his bed. It was past two o'clock in the morning, long enough since Severus went to bed that the bottle of vodka he downed the evening before had mutated into a throbbing headache.

He fumbled for the wand beside his bed to light some candles, grimacing as he did, and rolled over to peer down at the figure slumped on his bedroom floor. The Assistant looked worse than he did, sweat-soaked, his skin a sickening green, pupils blown wide. Both sides of his face were scratched up, as if he'd stuck his head in a bundle of barbed wire, and the blood at the wounds was even more green than his skin.

"What the hell happened to you?" Severus asked, voice scratching at his throat.

The only response he got was a weak, "Help."

Severus was highly tempted to leave him there and go back to sleep, but he was liable to forget about him and trip over his corpse in the morning.

Head pounding, he climbed out of bed and over the Assistant, staggered out the room to the bathroom, and downed a vial of Hangover Reliever. Head clearer, he flicked his wand towards the bedroom and headed for the lab, which he hadn't cleared out since he had to give up the drug business.

The Assistant came floating through and Severus cleared a table to set him down on. He lit the room and bent over the man, examining his injuries, his skin, his dilated pupils. That he was poisoned was obvious, but Severus had to figure out by what kind. He had a fairly good idea based on the symptoms, and he was lucky enough to have what he needed to brew an antidote.

He left the Assistant moaning weakly and pulled out a cauldron, setting it up as he summoned a book from his living room. It'd been long enough since he had to brew this antidote that he needed a recipe to work from, but once he got working, it came easily to him. It was potions. No matter what he was brewing, it calmed him down, relaxed him to let his hands cut and crush and carve ingredients, to count stirs and watch a potion come to simmer, waiting for that exact moment when he dropped the next ingredient in.

It took just under an hour to make, then five minutes to let it cool to a level that was drinkable. By the time he took a cupful to the Assistant, the man was barely conscious. Severus lifted his head, drawing a weak gasp of pain from him, and put the cup to his lips, glad when the Assistant managed to swallow by himself. Holding someone up, giving them a drink, and charming them to swallow all at the same time was extremely difficult.

The Assistant got down the whole cup. The green tinge to his skin faded and his pupils contracted to a normal size. Severus fetched a cloth, dipped it in the potion remaining in the cauldron, and wiped it over the scratches on the Assistant's face. He grimaced, but the green lingering in the cuts began to fade.

"What happened?" Severus asked.

"Dark Lord set a nasty little trap," the Assistant said, voice still weak. "Caught me out."

"You're lucky to be alive."

"Knew you'd save me."

Severus dropped the cloth over his face. "Don't expect me to do it again."

The Assistant pulled the cloth away and sat up slowly, dabbing at his face. "You'd never let me die in your house."

"Absolutely not," Severus agreed dryly, "so I would dump you in the river across the way." He turned away, searching out empty vials to store the rest of the antidote in. He'd keep a few for himself—emergency stock—and sell the rest on to a dealer or apothecary. One interaction would be fine, as long as he didn't go around as Herbert Smith again. "How did the Dark Lord catch you?" he asked, curious despite himself.

"I told you I was spying on him, right? I sneak into the hospital to find out what's up to, but he's been laying traps. One finally caught me."

"So you're useless to the Order now."

"More useful than you."

Severus froze.

"Fuck. I didn't—"

"Get out."

"Sev-"

Severus whirled. "Out!"

The Assistant ducked his head, regretful, but he left without another word. Severus clenched his hand on an empty vial, then threw it at the space the Assistant vacated. Leaving the antidote to congeal in the cauldron and the glass shards scattered across the floor, he stalked out the room and down to the kitchen. He was sure he had another bottle of vodka tucked away somewhere.

* * *

On the last day of January, Harry got an owl from Dumbledore with the magic suppression cuffs, including a note assuring him that there were no extra enchantments on the cuffs. Harry would be able to put them on and take them off as he liked.

He wasn't sure he could handle them. He tried them out that evening and had a panic attack when he did.

 _Get over it,_ the voice snapped at him as he stood in an empty classroom near the Slytherin common room. _We need to learn this. It's under your control. No one will hurt you while they're on. You'll still have your wand and you can take them off. Get over yourself._

Harry swallowed thickly. His hands shook as he put the cuffs around his wrists again, panic threatening to overwhelm him. The cuffs kept his magic from lashing out and he stood there, fists clenching, fighting the urge to tear the cuffs off again until the panic settled. He drew his wand and cast a few simple spells, just to reassure himself that he wasn't completely powerless.

 _You will do this._

He would. He had to.

It was still a battle the next morning to stop himself tearing them off as he stood in the Great Hall with the rest of the sixth years. The protections on the Great Hall were taken down temporarily for them to practise, but they couldn't Apparate anywhere beyond the room.

It was a strange new experience for Harry. He was so used to everything coming easily to him that it was strange to have to actually work at something. Even during his first term as a students all those years ago, most of the spells had come fairly easily to him. He was almost resentful when Susan Bones was the first person to Apparate, although she Splinched herself, leaving her leg behind. He tried not to be disappointed that he didn't manage it before the end of the lesson, but no one else managed it either so he didn't feel too bad.

February passed wet and windily. On the evening of Valentine's Day, Harry and Draco snagged the Room of Requirement and had sex again. It was the first time all term that they'd had chance to do anything more than kiss and cuddle a little. It was better than the first time, too; it was like Tyler had said once—it was something you got better at with practice.

But that night, as Harry lay in bed feeling happy and pleasantly sleepy, the voice suddenly spoke up.

 _You're going to lose him._

Harry snapped his eyes open, magical gaze focusing through his curtains and those around Draco's bed to check on him, but Draco slept peacefully, bare chest steadily rising and falling.

 _You're going to lose him. You'll never get a good time like that again. You'll never get to touch him, to kiss him, to feel his hands combing through your hair or his mouth curling into a smirk as it's pressed to your throat. You'll never get to hear him laugh, hear him tease you for being a nerd, hear him tell you he loves you. You'll never—_

"Why are you doing this?" Harry interrupted, good mood fading.

 _I'm just reminding you of what you're going to lose if you insist on not making a Horcrux. It's not just about evading hell. It's about keeping everything in your life that you love. You're not a sad, lonely, scared little boy anymore. You've got a whole life you don't want to give up, you've got people you'll miss and who'll miss you. Making a Horcrux will stop that from happening. You won't lose Draco, Hermione, Neville, Tyler, Cid, Ginny, Sirius, James—even your darling daddy._

"We don't even know for sure if it'll work."

 _It's better than anything else. It's the only thing we've found that gives us even a chance of surviving to see our eighteenth birthday. Don't you want that?_

Harry didn't answer, just rolled over, and slept. He had nightmares of Bellatrix that night and woke up screaming, tears on his face and body trembling, and didn't sleep again until sunrise.

* * *

A few days later Harry shut himself in the Room of Requirement and Wished for the Horcrux books back from Snape's grave. He read them over again, skimming the less relevant parts and reading slowly the bits about consequences, but it didn't matter. The voice made its point and Harry couldn't argue with it anymore. He didn't want to lose Draco or Sirius or anyone else. He didn't want to lose the life he had, especially not to go to hell instead, so he really didn't have a choice. He had to make a Horcrux.

He made a vessel. The voice suggested using Kiwi but he wasn't making the only thing he had from his mother into an object of evil, and there was nothing else he owned that would be any good. So he made a glass Antipodean Opaleye dragon no bigger than his palm, scales a pearly iridescent, eyes multi-coloured and glittering, mouth open with a burst of vivid red flame coming from it, and sent it off to Snape's grave with the books.

There was a Hogsmeade weekend on the first of March, less than two weeks away; he'd sneak off to make the Horcrux then because the longer he left it the more chance he had to talk himself out of it.

He'd thought he would struggle not to eat for the three days prior to making it, but his was so sick with nerves that it was actually easier not to eat. All he could think about was what he planned to do. Killing at Voldemort's command to protect his friends was one thing, but this was cold-blooded murder and no matter how much the target deserved it, he still felt sick that he was doing it.

The Apparition lesson the morning of the Hogsmeade weekend seemed to drag on forever, unhelped by the fact that no one seemed to really have the attention for it. A spring warmth and sunshine had come in and everyone wanted to be outside, not stuck in the Great Hall staring at circles and twitching on the spot. Ron Weasley got told off more than once for chatting; it was his birthday and he kept trying to show off his fancy new watch.

Afterwards, Harry skipped lunch and used the time to cut the necessary runes into his chest. He couldn't use magic to heal them to scabs, either, and made a bit of a mess rubbing antiseptic cream and wrapping bandages around them. He might be committing murder and splitting his soul, but he had no intention of getting infected wounds to go with it.

He returned to the Entrance Hall just in time to join Draco as lunch ended and everyone left for the village.

"Are you okay?" Draco asked him worriedly as they set off. He hadn't failed to notice Harry's lack of eating the last few days.

"I'm fine," Harry assured him, forcing a smile and resisting the urge to rub his fresh injuries.

There was only one Hogsmeade weekend per term this year and the summer term's was in the last week of June—after Draco's birthday. As such, Harry said he wanted time to find a birthday present and Draco was happy enough to let him go off alone. As soon as he did, Harry hurried down a side street, ducked into a narrow space between two closed down shops, and Disapparated.

He reappeared on a street in Thetford. He held out his hand and Wished for the main Horcrux book and the dragon he made, checking it over to make sure it hadn't been damaged since he made it.

 _Stop procrastinating and get on with it!_

He headed up the street to a house with a big number 12 on the front door. He didn't knock before trying the handle, and ignored his racing heart as he opened the door and stepped inside. He shut it behind him and stood there for a moment, looking around, but as far as he could see nothing had changed since the one month he spent living there.

"Vernon, is that you?"

His aunt's voice came from the kitchen and his uncle's gruff answer came from the living room.

"No, thought it was you."

There were footsteps on tiled floor then the kitchen door opened. Petunia stepped out—just as thin, horse-faced, and unpleasant as Harry remembered—and shrieked.

"You!"

There was a heaving noise from the living room then that door opened and Vernon looked out, eyes going to Petunia first and then, when he saw her white face and wide-eyes, his head spun around and he saw Harry.

"Who the devil are you?" he demanded.

"I suppose you wouldn't recognise me," Harry said. "I've changed a lot since the last time you hit me."

Vernon's face scrunched up in an ugly expression of confusion, then he went purple with anger. "You! What are you doing here?!"

"I've come to kill you," Harry said, and was surprised at how calm his voice was.

In the end, it was easy. Easy enough that he probably should have been concerned. Sure, he'd killed before, and sure, he wanted to kill his uncle, but he probably should have objected to it more. He probably should have hesitated.

But perhaps if he'd hesitated, he wouldn't have been able to do it at all, and he needed to do it. He was entirely justified, anyway. He'd made a demon deal because of Vernon's abuse. It was only fair that Vernon's death go towards Harry's efforts to avoid hell.

He'd planned it out beforehand, and the plan went without a hitch. Charms on the house kept Vernon and Petunia's screams from reaching the neighbours. Magic forced them into the living room, where he made Vernon sit on the sofa and tied up Petunia on the floor. He made her face her husband and Wished her head up and her eyes open.

"You can watch him die just like you watched him beat me all those times," he told her.

He collected all the jewellery and money in the house, tied it into a plastic bag, and Wished it to the Atlantic ocean to be lost to the seas. He didn't want anything from them, but he needed to disguise the deaths. After what happened when he was young, making Vernon's death look like the work of a burglar was only fitting.

"You can't do this!" Vernon said, trying to sound tough and failing. "We're _normal_. I remember those rules. You can't use your evil stuff on normal people. You'll get expelled. You'll get arrested."

"Only if the Ministry detects the use of magic, which they won't, because they've never detected my magic and they can't start now. No one is ever going to know there was a wizard in this house today. Now be silent."

He let the Horcrux book hover open in front of him, taking a small delight in scaring them with further displays of such obvious magic, and read the spell that ensured his split soul would move from him and into the dragon once he commit the murder.

When it was done, he Wished the book away and looked back to Vernon, holding his dragon in both hands and levitating the knife he took from the kitchen. He hadn't touched it—he didn't know much about Muggle or magical forensics, but he knew about fingerprints.

Vernon's expression turned to one of complete fear as the knife floated towards him, mouth moving as he shouted or begged, but he was still silent so Harry didn't know, nor care, what he said. The man fell still only when the knife floated towards him, staring wide-eyed at the tip as it drew closer and closer to his chest. Harry made it hover there, quietly threatening, until Vernon glanced up and met Harry's gaze.

Then he made a Wish and the knife drove forwards through thick flesh and into the heart underneath.

* * *

Harry wasn't entirely sure what happened next. He clearly remembered killing Vernon, drawing the knife out and licking blood from the blade with a shudder, and he remembered a sensation like being torn in two and his dragon glowing briefly, and then… then he wasn't sure.

He had flashes of digging up a grave, of frightened people cowering before him, of a mild pain in his hands. He thought he saw his aunt dead, but that couldn't be right, he hadn't planned that. He thought he returned to Hogsmeade, and then the Dark Mark must have burned, because the next thing he knew he was outside the hospital, pain lashing across his arm and blood soaking his robes—and Draco collapsed at his feet.

"Draco!"

Harry dropped down beside him and pulled open Draco's robe to examine his torso, where a chunk of flesh appeared carved out of his side. Instantly Harry Wished it healed and saw the wound seal up before him. His own arm was bleeding, and he absently healed that up, too.

"Draco—"

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Harry's head snapped up, gaze focusing on Lucius as he came running out the hospital entrance, throwing a curse at Harry. Harry shielded and it rebounded harmlessly against the hospital wall.

"What do you think you're doing, bringing him here?" Lucius yelled, dropping down on the other side of Draco. "You do _not_ bring other people here. What did you do to him?"

"I didn't—it was an accident—" He broke off with a grimace, clutching his arm as it burned.

"Father," Draco said weakly, but Lucius cut him off.

"Go," he snapped at Harry. "Answer your summons. You can explain to our master why you brought my son here, but mark this, boy—" here his voice dropped to a dark, threatening hiss "—if the Dark Lord brings harm on my son, I'll make you suffer for it."

"I can send him back—the Dark Lord won't know—"

"Go!"

Harry went. He looked behind him as he went, watching Lucius wave his wand over Draco. Draco laid still under his father's ministrations, but his head was turned to the side and he watched Harry walk away, concern etched on his face.

Wondering what had happened, Harry went to the meeting room where Voldemort was waiting. He could barely recall anything since the moment he killed Vernon, but he knew he'd never have willingly brought Draco here with him. Maybe Draco had grabbed him just as he teleported. It was the only explanation he could think of.

He hoped he'd be able to keep Draco's presence a secret from Voldemort, given that the meeting room was on the other side of the hospital, but as soon as he arrived, the first thing Voldemort said was, "Explain."

Still on his knee, Harry looked up warily. "My lord?"

"The young Malfoy's presence. Explain."

Feeling more terrified than he had since he was a prisoner in this place, but unwilling to admit that he couldn't remember anything clearly, Harry stuttered, "I-I-I don't—I think h-he grabbed me, when I was leaving."

"Are you so careless as to let people see you leave? Your place among my ranks is not meant to be revealed until you've killed Dumbledore. You have been careless and foolish."

"I'm sorry, I didn't—"

" _Crucio!_ "

* * *

Someone touched Harry's hands. He blinked his eyes open and for a bleary moment thought he saw inky marks on his own wrists, held by someone else's pale, long-fingered hand. His head swum, he groaned, tried to pull his hands free. Hadn't he been called to see Voldemort? He had to get his wits back.

" _Crucio._ "

* * *

Hands brushed across Harry's cheeks, soft, cool, and so light they almost weren't there. He blinked his eyes open and looked up into a familiar handsome face and his breath caught, heart skipping a beat, every muscle in his body clenching.

" _You should heal that injury,"_ said Tom Riddle.

Harry jerked up, scrambling back and flinging out a hand towards Riddle—but nothing happened. At least not to Riddle. Harry's head spun and for a moment he thought he would pass out or vomit, but Riddle didn't so much as stagger, remaining crouched, a faint smile on his face. He wore Hogwarts robes and gleaming black shoes, his dark hair was neatly combed back in the style of the 1940s, and the only thing that ruined his pristine appearance was the runes inked onto his wrists.

"You're not real," he whispered. "You can't be real."

" _Of course I'm not real, moron. You've cracked. He finally used one too many Cruciatus Curses on you, although that nasty bit of dark magic we did earlier might also have aided in your mental deterioration."_

"I have told you before, Harry, to keep your insanity restrained."

Harry glanced at Voldemort, who watched him with the same uncaring, vaguely hateful look that Harry came to accept as his default expression.

"Get to your knees and greet your lord as you should."

As Harry got to his knees, Riddle rose to his feet, a smirk on his face as he shifted to stand in front of Voldemort. _"It's almost like you're bowing to me."_

Harry closed his eyes as he bowed his head, ignoring the hissing voice and Wishing for the apparition to disappear.

"My lord," he murmured.

"You are lucky the person you brought is Lucius' son. Anyone else would be dead right now. Do not let it happen again."

"Yes, my lord."

He heard footsteps and then long fingers grabbed his chin, lifting his head and pulling his mask away as pain lashed through his scar, exasperating his headache. He opened his eyes to look up at red ones.

"If you ever bring someone into my sanctum again, I will give you to Bellatrix for a day and let her do as she will with you, then I will allow Merrick Mulciber half an hour with you. Frederick Nott is not the only rapist in my ranks. Perhaps that will be incentive enough to keep you alert."

" _That's unnecessarily cruel,"_ Riddle murmured from behind Harry, whose face went white at Voldemort's words.

"Y-yes, my lord," he stuttered. "It won't happen again."

"Ensure it doesn't." He let go, stalking away to the throne-like chair he favoured, settling in it and watching Harry hatefully. "Stand up."

Harry stood. He was unsteady on his feet, wanting nothing more than to lie down, curl in a ball, and sleep for eight hours, but he managed to stay upright.

"I believe you're capable of making a residence completely impervious to an individual, are you not?"

"Yes, my lord."

"I need this place protected from the Assistant. Make it so that he cannot enter in any way."

Another time, Harry might have considered disobeying and just pretending to enchant the house, but the threat of Bellatrix and Mulciber and the knowledge that Draco was somewhere, presumably still within Voldemort's grasp, made him do exactly as he was asked. The Assistant's spying didn't take priority over keeping Draco safe.

"It's done."

Voldemort's gaze narrowed slightly and Harry hoped he didn't ask Harry to prove it. He didn't know how he'd do that.

He didn't, but what he did ask wasn't much better. "When will you kill Albus Dumbledore?"

"I… you said I have until—"

"I want a date, Harry."

"After… after exams."

"When are they?"

"The second week of June." OWL and NEWTs were the first two weeks, although the Ancient Runes and History of Magic, the only ones Harry would be sitting, were both in the second week.

"Then you will kill him on the last day. The Friday."

"Yes, my lord," Harry said, and tried to ignore the chill at having it set in stone.

"You will also get me into the castle."

Harry felt his eyes widen. "What? I-I mean, I…"

"Do you intend to tell me you can't?" Voldemort said in a dangerous tone, standing to loom over Harry. "Because I would remind you, Harry, that I know for certain you spent some time in the castle undetected, and that just this summer you reached the very bowels of Hogwarts to retrieve one of my followers."

"I-I can do it."

"Then you will. Myself and all my Death Eaters, the evening of the last day of exams."

"Why?" Harry couldn't help asking.

"Because I am ordering you to."

Harry swallowed thickly. "Are you… the students, will you…?"

"I will not harm any of them that do not fight me. I intend to make my stand. It is time the world knows that Lord Voldemort rules them, as I will as soon as Albus Dumbledore is dead." He put his wand to Harry's chin, tilting his head to look up. "You will allow myself and my Death Eaters into the school, and then you will kill Albus Dumbledore before everyone. Do you understand?"

He closed his eyes. "Yes, my lord."

But if any of the students got hurt he'd never forgive himself.

Voldemort lowered his wand. "You're dismissed. Be sure to take the young Malfoy with you."

Harry bowed and left hurriedly, magical eye already spinning in search of Draco. He was up in a bedroom on the top floor, the one Harry thought was Lucius', and looked thankfully healthy. A peek through his robes showed his injury was healed to an old scar. Harry hurried upstairs, vanishing his mask as he went, knocking on the door and getting a terse, "Enter," from Lucius.

Harry pushed the door open. Draco sat on the edge of the bed, but he stood when he saw Harry. Mindful of Lucius' hateful glare, Harry didn't rush to him, though he desperately wanted to.

"Harry," Draco breathed, relief in every syllable. He took a step towards Harry, but Lucius suddenly stalked forwards, placing himself firmly between them, wand out. Harry stiffened, eying him. Was he allowed to retaliate if Lucius attacked him? Voldemort hadn't given Lucius permission to, so presumably Harry was allowed to defend himself.

"Father!"

"Be quiet, Draco," Lucius said without looking around, levelling his wand at Harry's face. "You—if you _ever_ hurt my son again—"

"Father, I told you—"

"—I will make what happened to you last summer feel like a Tickling Charm. Is that absolutely clear?"

"I won't, I swear it," Harry promised, meaning every word.

Draco moved around Lucius to stand by Harry, grabbing his hand and glaring up at his father. "It wasn't his fault. I told you, I'm the one that grabbed him when he Apparated, I'm the reason we Splinched."

Lucius lowered his wand, though his expression didn't change. "So you said," Lucius replied coolly. "But consider what _I_ said."

Draco set his chin, saying nothing. Harry wanted to ask what Lucius had said, but he wouldn't while the man was in front of them.

"We have to go," he said quietly.

"Avoid Splincing him again," Lucius warned, and Harry nodded, pulling Draco out the room and down the hall. They left the hospital quickly and, once outside, Harry tugged Draco close.

"Hold tight," he said, and teleported.

They reappeared in the light sprinkling of trees lining the path from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade and Harry threw his arms around Draco, hugging him tight. It was as much to keep himself upright as it was to reassure himself Draco was alright. The teleporting hadn't helped his headache and post-seizure fuzziness.

"I'm sorry. God, Draco, I'm so sorry. I never wanted to hurt you."

Draco returned the hug with just as much vigour, clinging to him tightly. "It wasn't your fault. I shouldn't have grabbed you."

"I never wanted that, never wanted you to see me there. Did anyone hurt you?"

"No. No, Harry, I'm fine. I just talked with Father a bit."

"And you're healed, right?" he said, one hand dropping down to press against Draco's side. Draco winced slightly. "Shit, sorry."

"It's fine. It's fixed, just tender. What about you? You're covered in blood."

"I'm fine," Harry answered dismissively, even though his arm ached. "I'm sorry, Draco."

"Don't be, it was my fault. I'll warn you next time I decide to sneak up behind you."

"Please do."

" _Are you quite finished? You two will make me sick."_

Harry glanced around. Riddle leant against a tree, arms folded over his chest, a sneer on his face. Harry tried Wishing him away again, but the figure remained.

" _Going to tell him about me?"_ he asked mockingly. _"On the one hand, he already knows you're crazy. On the other, how will he react to know you're even more so now? Hearing voices is one thing, but hallucinations… that's a one way ticket to the psych ward at Saint Mungo's."_

"What are you looking at?"

Harry dragged his gaze back to Draco. "Nothing."

Draco's hand cupped his cheek. "Are you alright? He tortured you." He shuddered. "Merlin, that was awful. I could hear it even from outside."

He pulled Harry against him again, hand moving around to cradle the back of his head, the other clutching at his robes. Harry closed his eyes, pressing his face to Draco's shoulder and wishing his familiar, normally comforting smell wasn't tainted by the metallic stench of blood.


	46. Chapter 46

**Chapter 46**

Harry and Draco returned quickly from Hogsmeade to Slytherin, where they both gathered bathing things and headed out again. After the Splinching, they both wanted a good soak. They parted ways on the fifth floor, where Draco left to use the prefects' bathroom. Harry took a peek inside and had to admit it was extremely lavish, but he had no inclination to bathe there.

"We could have one together," Draco suggested with a wiggle of his eyebrows.

"Maybe another time," Harry said, feeling himself go red at the suggestion. The fact that they'd slept together three times now, not to mention the groping sessions, somehow didn't make him any less embarrassed to talk about it. "I just want to have a quiet soak today."

That was true enough, but he also didn't want to admit that he was a bit off-put by the depth of the prefects' bath, which was big enough to swim in. He was still afraid of drowning and he much preferred to bathe in the ergonomically shaped tub that the Room of Requirement always provided him.

The Room also gave him a shower that day, which he didn't realise he wanted until that moment. He felt a bit awkward undressing in front of Riddle, but there wasn't much to be done about it and Riddle at least looked away, albeit with a roll of his eyes. Harry went quickly in the shower, washing away the lingering sensation of blood on his skin, then moved to the bath and sank beneath the blissfully hot water.

He was glad for the bubbles that covered him from neck to toe as he watched Riddle approach and perch on the edge of the tub. He looked supremely bored as he let one hand drop to trail his fingers through the water, although he left no ripples in his wake. Harry grabbed at his wrist, then abruptly let go.

"I thought—you're not real." The words came out almost begging.

Riddle smirked at him. _"Are you afraid? Afraid I might be more than the product of your broken mind?"_

Harry grabbed him again to shove his hand away, but Riddle caught his wrist with his other hand. His skin was chill to the touch, almost as cold as a ghost, but decidedly more solid.

" _Do you really think your dear lord and master wouldn't have said something if I'd been real? That Draco or Lucius wouldn't have said something? I'm just the voice inside your head, except now I'm also something you can see and feel. Is it really any surprise? You did just split your soul in two; it's no wonder you're going crazier."_

Harry swallowed thickly. He glanced down at Riddle's hands as they let go, at the runes inked over his wrists. "Why do you have those?"

" _Because you know you should."_

"Why do you look like that?"

Riddle shrugged lazily. _"It's your mind, you tell me. Maybe I just look like this because you were with Voldemort when I appeared. Maybe I'm a subconscious projection of your fears."_ His gaze cut sharply to Harry. _"You're not to tell anyone about me."_

Harry didn't answer. He didn't relish the idea of letting people know he was going crazier than he already was, but he was worried about it and he thought it might be prudent to at least let Snape know.

Riddle twisted and leant over him, hands gripping each side of the bathtub. The bath suddenly deepened, the Room responding to Harry's desire to get away from him.

" _There's no need for anyone to know,"_ Riddle said quietly. _"Not your dear daddy or your darling Draco."_

He smiled, a soft, kind smile, without any malice. Harry was suddenly struck by the thought that he was exceptionally handsome, and it was exceptionally unfair that his mind should give him such a vision.

" _Harry,"_ Riddle said, and Harry's breath caught. It was the first time he'd ever used his name, even when it was just a voice. _"I'm not your enemy. You don't need to be afraid of me, but it's safer to keep this between us. It's one thing to hear voices, but it's something else to have visual hallucinations. If you tell Draco, he'll either check you straight into Saint Mungo's or he'll chuck you over for being too crazy. Tell your daddy and he's likely to do something stupid trying to fix you. He could end up getting himself caught."_

"You don't mean that. He wouldn't do it."

" _Maybe he wouldn't, maybe he would. But they'd ask about it, they'd wonder why you're suddenly seeing things, and what are you going to tell them? That you murdered your own family in cold blood so that you could split your soul in two? This is better kept to ourselves. I won't bother you any more than I did before. You've nothing to worry about."_

Riddle pulled back and Harry toed the taps, drawing more water and bubbles into the deeper bath, and really hoped Riddle was telling the truth.

* * *

Later that night, after the rest of the Slytherins were fast asleep, Harry left the school again. He knew he shouldn't be breaking curfew when he'd already had so much trouble that day, but he had to check on Snape's grave. Riddle insisted that the Horcrux was there, safe, but Harry had to see for himself. Vague memories of digging up the empty coffin weren't enough for him.

But Riddle was right. When Harry pulled up the coffin and opened it, he found the glass dragon nestled inside. The inside of the coffin was also heavily dusted with black and white powder—salt and goofer dust, which would keep out demons and hellhounds—and the outside was etched with demon-repelling runes he remembered reading about the year before.

He took the dragon out to inspect and wasn't sure if he imagined that he could feel that piece of his soul inside it. Imagined or not, it made him uncomfortable to handle and he quickly replaced it, put the lid back on, and returned the coffin to the ground. He added an Unbreakable Charm and several other protective charms to the coffin, and once he'd filled the hole again he Wished it to look undisturbed and put a Perception Filter Charm on it, so no one would pay it any attention. His Horcrux was probably as safe as it would get; he could only hope it worked like Riddle thought it would.

He tried to get rid of Riddle. Wishing didn't work, as it didn't when he was just a voice, but for the first time Harry tried using Occlumency against it. Riddle was a part of his mind, so he thought he could use the Occlumency Snape taught him this summer to block off that part of his mind, but it didn't work. He wasn't hugely surprised, but he was less disappointed than he should have been. As long as Harry didn't think about telling anyone, Riddle was no nastier than he had been as a voice, and Harry had had him for so long that he almost couldn't remember what it was like to have silence in his head. Twisted as it was, he'd miss it if Riddle vanished completely.

A few days later, Harry got a note from Sirius asking him to come up to his rooms after classes. Harry went apprehensively, a sensation he felt around Sirius most of the time these days. Sirius appeared to be keeping his word about not telling anyone Harry was a Death Eater, but he was also a little colder with Harry than he used to be. Harry couldn't blame him for it, and given how difficult their relationship had become since June it wasn't much of a blow, but it made him ever wary of what Sirius might do next.

Only Sirius was there when Harry arrived. He smiled thinly at Harry, offered him a seat, and sat opposite him on the sofa.

"What did you want?" Harry asked.

"I've got some news I need to tell you."

"Bad news?"

"Some might say so. I don't, and you might not."

"What is it?"

"Your aunt and uncle are dead."

Harry stiffened. He felt Riddle's hands come down on his shoulders, sending a chill through him.

"Both of them?"

Sirius nodded, watching him carefully. "They were murdered this Saturday."

"How?" Harry asked, because that was the sort of thing you did when your family was killed, even if you already knew the answer.

"They were stabbed, as part of a robbery."

" _Ask about your cousin,"_ Riddle said. Harry did.

"He wasn't there," Sirius told him. "He was off at his boarding school."

"That's good," Harry said, and twitched when Riddle snorted.

Sirius cocked his head. "Are you… how are you feeling?"

Horrified, Harry didn't say.

He shrugged. "I don't know. It's… I hated them and they're dead."

"Are you glad?"

Harry eyed him warily. "What'll you do if I say yes?"

"I'd think you were pretty normal," Sirius said, but slowly, and added, "and I'd ask if you wish you'd done it yourself."

Riddle laughed. Harry just felt sick.

"Do you think I would do that?"

Sirius looked away. "Honestly? I don't know. You killed Snape. I don't know what you might have done for Voldemort over the past eight months. Maybe you'd relish the thought of murdering your aunt and uncle, given how they treated you."

"I wouldn't relish it," Harry said, staring at his knees and wishing Riddle would stop looking so smug. He didn't relish what he'd done. He didn't regret it and he was glad they were dead, but he didn't relish it, not like the Death Eaters relished killing people.

"But you'd like to have killed them?"

Harry said nothing, but he looked up, staring at Sirius with his mismatched eyes. Eyes that would have been normal if it weren't for his uncle.

Sirius blew out a breath. "Well. Yeah, they did deserve it."

Harry looked away again. "Can I go now? I have homework."

"Sure. But Harry, if you need to talk…"

"I know where to find you."

He left, but didn't head for Slytherin. He went up to the Room of Requirement, and shut himself in the bare, dimly lit room it provided, barely bigger than a broom cupboard. He locked the door and leant against it, sliding down to the floor, wrapping his arms around his knees, and staring up at Riddle.

"What happened that day?"

" _Why are you asking me?"_

"Because I don't remember. You… I don't remember what I did after killing my uncle, and then you appeared…"

" _That's hardly my fault. I'm just a product of your imagination."_

Harry pressed his hands to his eyes, reducing the vision on his blue one until he saw nothing. An image of Petunia, dead, flashed before him. "I didn't plan to kill her. I only meant to kill him."

" _You don't know that you did."_

"But she's dead. Both of them, the same day. Both stabbed."

" _Perhaps someone came to the house after you."_

"That's stupid. It was me, you know it was me, but why? Why did I…?"

" _How should I know? I'm just a product of your broken mind, Harry."_ He crouched, putting his hands on Harry's knees. Harry stared at them, at the inked marks on his pale skin. _"Forget about your aunt; she only got what she deserved and what's done is done. The important thing is you made your Horcrux and now you're safe."_

"We don't know that. We don't know for sure it'll protect me from the hellhounds."

" _It'll protect you from hell. That's the important thing. Trust me, Harry. You're safe."_

Harry dropped his head forwards, hiding his face in his knees, feeling the chill of Riddle's hands against his forehead, and hoped he was right.

* * *

Now that Draco had come face to face with Voldemort again, Harry knew he couldn't put off teaching him Occlumency. The events of 1st March had been unusual enough that Voldemort obviously hadn't gone digging through Draco's mind, but the chances of Draco meeting him again were unfortunately high and next time Voldemort might not overlook him so much.

He read up on Legilimency, thinking that he might be able to teach Draco himself if he knew how to do it. He could put on the cuffs he used for Apparition lessons and it would make his magic normal enough to work. But he abandoned that idea as soon as he actually read about Legilimency—more especially, about the risk to the mind of both the caster and the target if the spell went wrong. It could cause anything from temporary mental connections that drove people mad to damaging the mind so much a person was left vegetative. Harry couldn't risk doing that to Draco.

He thought about it for a few days before settling on the only solution he could. One week after the Hogsmeade trip, Harry took Draco up to the Room of Requirement after their Apparition lesson (in which Harry managed it for the first time, with sudden and almost surprising ease).

"No bed this time?" Draco said, looking at the loveseat the Room provided, the only bit of furniture in the room, set before a low fire.

"Not today," Harry said. Not ever if Riddle stuck around. Harry didn't like the idea of being watched while he had sex, no matter how much he liked watching other people. He tugged Draco over to the sofa and sat down. "I need to talk to you about something."

"That sounds ominous," Draco said, settling beside him.

"No, it's nothing bad. It's just… do you know what Occlumency is?"

Draco's brow furrowed. "Uh… some kind of mind magic, I think."

Harry nodded and explained it further, and why he wanted Draco to learn it. By the time he was done, Draco was nodding.

"That sounds fair. Are you going to teach me then?" He cocked a grin. "Are we going to play professor and student?"

"No, I—wait, you were being dirty, weren't you?" he asked suspiciously, and Draco laughed.

"I could play the professor instead."

"No, thanks," Harry said dryly.

Draco shifted closer, still grinning, and kissed him. "So," he said, placing little kisses along Harry's jaw, "if you won't teach me, how do I learn?"

"You, um, there's a teacher," Harry said, shooting a glance towards Riddle even as he tilted his head to let Draco mouth at his neck.

"Who?"

"Um, they're—the thing is—"

Riddle sauntered over, bent to put his mouth by Harry's ear, and hissed, _"You appear to be having trouble with your conversation. Maybe you should stop letting him fondle you like a cheap whore."_

"Shut up!"

Draco drew back. "What did I say?"

"No, I'm sorry, I didn't—I wasn't talking to you."

"Then who—" Draco's hurt look turned angry. "That voice in your head? What the hell did it say to you?"

"I'm sorry," Harry said, not meeting his gaze.

"I don't want an apology," he snapped, "I want—" He stopped, leant back against the other side of the sofa, rubbed a hand over his face. When he lowered it, he still looked angry, but less so, and now also apologetic. "Harry, I'm sorry, I'm not angry at _you_."

"I know."

"Will you tell me what it said? Please?"

Harry glanced at Riddle, who was looking smug, then away again. Draco put a hand on his knee.

"Please?"

Harry closed his eyes and told him, in a mutter. For a moment after there was silence in which he didn't dare open his eyes, then Draco asked, "Has it said things like that before?"

He sounded faintly horrified and Harry opened his eyes to see his mouth twisted into a deep frown.

"No. I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," Draco said. "I don't like it, but it's not your fault. You don't believe I think of you like that, though, right? Because I don't. I never would."

Harry shifted over, wrapping his arms around Draco's waist and kissing his cheek. "I know you don't. I don't think that, I promise."

"But the voice in your head does."

"No." Harry squeezed him, snuggling closer. "It doesn't, not really. It was just being a twat."

" _Rude. And I'm a 'he', not an 'it'."_

"Is it always a twat?"

"Sometimes. It was mostly because we were talking about important stuff. It doesn't like me getting distracted."

Draco snorted. "That's almost ridiculous. But fine, Occlumency. Who's going to teach me if you don't?"

"Um, the thing is, this teacher… if I take you to him, you can't tell anyone. In fact…" he bit his lip, not liking what he was about to say but knowing it was for the best. "If you don't master Occlumency by the end of the lesson, it'd be best if I made you forget about him."

Draco had put his arms around Harry when Harry cuddled him, but he drew away now, standing so they didn't touch at all. "You want to erase my memory?"

"I don't _want_ to," Harry said quickly. "I really don't, but he's… Draco, if anyone finds out about him, I'm in so much trouble. If the Dark Lord finds out…"

"Who is it?"

"Will you let me?"

"Erase my mind? No!"

"Draco—"

Draco whirled away, stalking to the fireplace and leaning both hands on the mantle. "It's my memories, Harry!"

"I've done it before."

Draco spun. "You've what?"

Harry looked down at his knees and made a Wish. He heard Draco gasp softly, but didn't look up.

"I got beat up by a _Muggle_ ," Draco said, sounding utterly disgusted.

"You did provoke him," Harry muttered.

"You erased my memory!"

Harry cringed, but looked up. "I'm sorry, I am, but I had to protect myself. We weren't even friends then!"

" _Hey, maybe he'll break up with you and we—"_

Harry burst out of his seat, grabbed Draco's face in both hands and pressed their foreheads together. "Please don't."

"Don't what?" Draco said, startled.

"Break up with me. I'm sorry, I really am, please don't leave me."

"Shit, Harry, I'm not going to _leave_ you." His arms came around Harry, hugging him close, and he kissed Harry's temple. "Don't be an idiot. I love you, okay? I'm not leaving you. If that voice is telling you I will, tell it to shut the fuck up. I'm not going anywhere."

Harry buried his face in Draco's shoulder, wrapping his arms around Draco's neck and clinging to him, ignoring Riddle's disgruntled grumbling. Draco's cheek pressed to his hair.

"If I learn Occlumency, you won't have to erase my memory, will you?"

"No."

"Then I'll learn it."

"But if you don't…"

"I will," Draco said firmly, and Harry really hoped he would. "So, who is this teacher?"

"My dad."

Draco drew back just enough to look Harry in the face. "Your dad's dead."

Harry said nothing.

"Harry, your dad died. I saw him die. You killed him. I was at his funeral."

"I faked it."

"You…" Draco closed his eyes, took a deep breath, opened them again. "You faked your father's death?"

"Yes."

"In front of a whole roomful of people. Including the Dark Lord."

"Yes."

Draco closed his eyes again, now sounding distinctly unsteady. "You disobeyed the very first order the Dark Lord gave you. Merlin's beard, if he finds out…"

"That's why I said I have to erase your memory."

"Yeah," Draco said with a choked laugh. "Yeah, I get that now."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm… amazed. Are you sure you're not meant to be in Gryffindor? This kind of thing is exactly the sort of stupidity Gryffindors call brave."

"It wasn't brave," Harry countered. "I just couldn't kill him, but I couldn't let everyone else die, either. I just did what I had to."

"Gryffindor," Draco said again, then yelped when Harry jabbed a finger in his side, opening his eyes to glare at him. "Meany. So when are we going for these lessons?"

"We'll sneak out tonight. Don't expect to get much sleep."

Draco shrugged. "It's Sunday tomorrow, we can lie in." He kissed Harry, hand beginning to move over Harry with purpose. "So we've got the afternoon to ourselves now…"

Behind Harry, the sofa vanished, replaced by a bed. Harry glanced around at it, at Riddle, and quickly away.

"Draco, I… not today."

He felt Draco pout against his cheek. "Not anything?"

"No."

"Fine," he said, only sulking a little. "What do you want to do then?"

" _You have homework."_

"Flying," Harry said. "Together. We haven't in ages."

"Alright. Let's go flying."

Harry smiled and kissed him gratefully, tugging him out the room. Maybe in the air, he could leave Riddle behind, just for a little while.

* * *

Harry sent a message to Snape so that he'd be prepared for a visit that night, but he didn't mention that he was bringing Draco. When the two of them arrived in Spinner's End, Snape looked up from the book he was reading, stared at Draco, then cut his gaze to Harry.

"Please tell me that's the Assistant making another attempt at apologising."

"Why would I bring the Assistant?" Harry asked. "What does he need to apologise for?"

Snape pinched the bridge of his nose. "Why would you bring Draco bloody Malfoy?"

"It's nice to see you too, professor," Draco said dryly. "I'm glad you're not dead."

Snape dropped his hand, glaring at them both. "Harry, if the Dark Lord finds out about this—"

"That's why we're here. I need you to teach him Occlumency. I've been telling him about the lessons Dumbledore's been giving me, and last weekend he accidentally came with me when I was summoned, so—"

"How did he accidentally go to a Death Eater's meeting?"

They explained the events of a week ago. By the time they were done, Snape was pinching the bridge of his nose again and looked as if he desperately wanted a strong drink.

"Draco, I would expect you to know better than to grab someone who's Apparating."

"I didn't realise he was about to," Draco said sullenly. "All due respect, professor, but you've no right to lecture me. My father already did that."

Snape lowered his hand. "I'm not your professor anymore, Draco. You may as well call me by my name." He gaze shifted to Harry. "As for you…" He paused, shook his head, sighed. "I don't know what to do with you."

"You don't need to do anything with me. Just teach him how to do Occlumency. He needs to be able to defend himself if he faces the Dark Lord again."

Snape looked between them. "I may not be able to. Oh, I can teach you, Draco," he said when the two boys frowned. "But whether you can learn it enough to keep out the Dark Lord is another matter. He is a highly accomplished Legilimens. You are a teenage boy."

"Harry keeps him out."

"You aren't Harry. You don't have his power. Even if you did, I spent most of this summer teaching him how to defend his mind against the Dark Lord. You expect me to teach you in a single night?"

"I'll bring him back as often as we have to," Harry said. "Sir, please, you have to teach him."

Snape drummed his fingers against the arm of the chair. "It would be simpler to erase his memory."

"I don't want to."

"I don't want him to," Draco agreed.

"Besides," Harry said, "you're the one that says I have to face the consequences of my actions instead of running away."

Snape muttered something under his breath that Harry didn't catch, but the tone was clearly irritable. Nonetheless, he stood and drew his wand.

"If you prove sufficiently apt tonight, then we'll discuss further lessons. However," he gave both boys a stern look, "if I deem you lacking, you will agree to erasing the memories of me, and whatever else Draco knows that puts him and everyone under the Word of Death Curse in danger."

Harry looked at Draco. He didn't much like the idea, and he could see Draco didn't either, but it was a reasonable demand.

With clear reluctance, Draco nodded.

"Very well. Draw your wand, Draco. Let me see how you fare to begin with."

Harry moved aside and sat to watch them train. It was strange to see from the outside, to watch Snape staring at Draco while Draco stood, eyes unfocused. Harry wondered what memories Draco was being forced to view again. He hoped it wasn't any of their intimate times together; he really didn't need Snape seeing those.

It quickly became very boring. Draco sometimes conjured a shield, or hexed Snape with some minor jinx, but it wasn't very interesting. Harry Wished for Nyneve's journal and worked at it while Snape and Draco practised. Riddle was pleasantly quiet while he did, much to Harry's relief. Nyneve's journal was something Riddle considered worthy of Harry's time. Harry liked to think it was his own love of history influencing the hallucination, but there were times when he wondered if that was really true.

Draco and Snape worked for three hours. Harry drowned them out as he translated and was surprised when a glass of water appeared in front of him. He looked up and took it from Snape, who pushed his books aside and sat down. Draco was across from them, in Snape's usual armchair, looking worn out.

"How'd it go?" Harry asked.

"Has the Dark Lord really split his soul into pieces?" Snape asked.

Harry had forgotten he'd see that if he went in Draco's mind; he didn't like Snape knowing about Horcruxes. He knew it was unlikely, but he was afraid Snape would find out about his own, hyper aware of the fact that it was less than a mile away from this very house.

"Yes," he admitted. "So Dumbledore says."

"God help us," Snape muttered, rubbing a hand over his face.

"But the Occlumency," Harry said.

Rather reluctantly, Snape said, "He did well. It would seem Narcissa was teaching him the basics as a child—you should resume those exercises before bed—and I'm forced to admit he has a natural affinity for it."

Draco grinned smugly. Snape noticed.

"Don't get excited yet, Mr Malfoy," he said sharply, wiping off Draco's smirk. "You have the ability for it, but you're not skilled yet. You certainly aren't able to stand up to the Dark Lord, nor Headmaster Dumbledore."

"But he could?" Harry asked. "With more training?"

"Perhaps. I'm willing to try, at least. Can you be here twice a week?"

Harry and Draco looked at each other. Draco shrugged. "Who needs sleep?"

* * *

The next Monday, Harry had another lesson with Dumbledore. Harry expected more about Horcruxes, but Dumbledore talked about Voldemort's actions after he left school. Apparently Voldemort's first job was working in a pawn shop in Knockturn Alley, but it wasn't the first job he wanted.

"He first asked Professor Dippet, Hogwarts headmaster at the time, if he could remain here as a teacher," Dumbledore said.

Harry blanched. Riddle scowled at him.

"Did he really want to stay here? As Defence teacher? That is the post he wanted, isn't it? I can't imagine he wanted anything else."

Dumbledore nodded. "It was. I believe there are several reasons for Voldemort's request. Firstly, I think Hogwarts was the only place he ever felt at home; it is where he'd been happiest. Secondly, the castle is a stronghold of ancient magic; Voldemort likely hoped to discover every secret Hogwarts had to offer. Thirdly, being a teacher would give him great power and influence over young witches and wizards."

"Which he'd love," Harry says. "He'd have taught them all to hate Muggles. But he didn't get it. Right?"

God he hoped not, but after the teachers they'd had, Harry could imagine Voldemort had been one of the people to have the Defence post for a year.

"No, he did not. Professor Dippet felt he was too young and told him to come back in a few years, if he still wished to teach. So Voldemort went off to Borgin and Burkes, which specialises in unique and powerful objects. Polite, handsome, charming, and clever as he was—" (by the bookcase, Riddle preened; Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes) "—he was soon set to jobs of a nature only found at places like Borgin and Burkes. He was sent by the partners to persuade people to part with their treasures, a job he was unusually gifted at."

" _He's starting to grow on me,"_ Riddle murmured, looking pleased.

They went into the memory of a house elf named Hokey then, who worked for a rich woman named Hepzibah Smith. Voldemort was sent to make an offer for some goblin-made armour that she had, but Hepzibah had far more interesting treasures to show Voldemort—namely Slytherin's locket, and a small golden cup that once belonged to Helga Hufflepuff.

"Hepzibah Smith died two days later," Dumbledore told Harry when they left the memory. "Hokey the house-elf was convicted by the Ministry of poisoning her mistress' evening cocoa by accident."

"I'm guessing she didn't. Voldemort did it and made the elf believe it, like he did with Morfin Gaunt?"

Dumbledore nodded. "It was some time before anyone realised the cup and the locket were missing from Hepzibah's collection, and by that time Tom had resigned from Borgin and Burke's and vanished. He wasn't seen for a very long time afterwards. Now I would like to show you one last memory."

The last memory was another of Dumbledore's and took them into his office. The memory Dumbledore was definitely younger than the one standing beside Harry, but he was older than the man who went to visit a pre-teen Tom Riddle. Voldemort, when he turned up, was even more changed even from the memory they'd just watched. He wasn't quite the bone-white being that Harry worked for, but the haughty good looks of Tom Riddle were gone.

Harry watched Voldemort ask for the Defence position and Dumbledore refuse him, and when they left the memory he asked, "So what was that all about?"

Dumbledore gestured for him to sit down and settled in his own chair before answering. "I believe he was looking for something. You'll remember that we agreed Voldemort collected items that he considered worthy to be used as Horcruxes."

"Another of the founder's relics? He had Slytherin's locket and Hufflepuff's cup, so you think he wanted something from Ravenclaw or Gryffindor?"

"I believe so. He did not have the chance to search the school that day he asked for a job, but I am sorry to say I do not know if he ever found something belonging to those two founders."

"Okay," Harry says, "so six Horcruxes: the ring, the locket, the cup, and the diary, plus potentially two objects belonging to Rowena Ravenclaw and… Godric… Gryffindor…"

Dumbledore peered over his glasses at him. "You've had a thought."

Harry made a Wish and his first ever box of Famous Figurines appeared in his hands, the Hogwarts Founders Edition. It was a bit dusty, having spent years in Snape's quarters and then sitting in Harry's room at Black Stag House since last July, but he wiped it off, removed the lid, and turned them to face Dumbledore. He pointed to the tiny locket around Salazar's neck, the cup in Helga's hand, the crown Rowena wore, and the sword Godric carried.

"Are these what he was hoping to find? That's Ravenclaw's missing diadem, isn't it? I've read about it. Did Godric really have a sword?"

"He did indeed," Dumbledore said, inspecting the figures with a smile. "I had no idea these were so accurate. These were the gifts Severus sent you, I believe?"

Harry lay the box down, shooting Dumbledore a dark look. "You knew about it?"

"Only after the incident several years ago, the summer you stayed here."

Harry nodded, replacing the lid. "Do you think Voldemort got the diadem or the sword?"

"I feel safe in saying he hasn't laid hands on Godric's sword. Legends say it presents itself only to a worthy Gryffindor. However, Ravenclaw's diadem, I cannot be so certain about. As you say, it's missing and has been for centuries. It's possible Voldemort found it."

"If he did find the diadem, that still leaves one more Horcrux we don't know about. And if he didn't, then two more."

Dumbledore nodded. "I wonder what you will say when I confess that I have been curious for a while about the behaviour of the snake, Nagini?"

That surprised Harry. "Animals can be Horcruxes?"

"It is inadvisable," Dumbledore said, "because to confide a part of your soul to something that can think and move for itself is obviously a very risky business. However, if my calculations are correct, Voldemort was still at least one Horcrux short of his goal of six when he entered your parents' house, Harry, with the intention of killing you.

"He seems to have reserved the process of making Horcruxes for particularly significant deaths. I am sure that he was intending to make his final Horcrux with your death. As we know, he failed. After an interval of some years, however, he used Nagini to kill an old Muggle man, and it might then have occurred to him to turn her into his last Horcrux. She underlines the Slytherin connection, which enhances Lord Voldemort's mystique. I think he is perhaps as fond of her as he can be of anything; he certainly likes to keep her close and he seems to have an unusual amount of control over her, even for a Parselmouth."

Harry recalled seeing Nagini around the hospital, but he'd never interacted with snakes much himself so he didn't know what kind of control was normal for a Parselmouth.

He looked down at the Figurines, wiping away lingering bits of dust. "So now we just need to find and destroy them."

"One of those tasks will be easier than the other."

Harry looked up sharply. "Which one?"

Dumbledore considered him for a moment. Harry couldn't tell what he was looking for.

"The Assistant," Dumbledore eventually said slowly, "claims to know the location of them."

Harry could believe that. "Do you think he'll tell us?"

"He has promised me he would, as soon as I find a way to destroy them."

"You haven't then? What ways are there to destroy them?" he asked, as if he didn't already know.

"Basilisk venom would be the most ideal choice, however all that Severus harvested from the one in the Chamber of Secrets was lost in an accident in his store cupboard last year."

"An accident?"

"Yes," Dumbledore said with an air of innocence, "I believe several of his jars exploded, resulting in a loss and contamination of numerous ingredients."

"Oh," Harry said, remembering that day he found Wormtail dead and his angry reaction when Snape pointed out he was his father. "Um… sorry."

Still, he had to be glad Dumbledore didn't have access to something that could as easily destroy his own Horcrux as Voldemort's.

Dumbledore fortunately didn't appear angry. "Accidents happen, and you couldn't have known we'd need it. As for other methods, Fiendfyre is the most readily available. Unfortunately, it is also incredibly difficult to control. There are a few other extremely destructive substances, such as captured nundu breath, but like basilisk venom they are very difficult to obtain."

Harry bit his lip, thinking. He wasn't sure the idea he had was a good one, but if it meant destroying Voldemort…

He took a deep breath, looked up. "I think I might be able to destroy them. Can I try?"

"That would be very dangerous."

"And Fiendfyre isn't?"

"You're unfortunately correct," Dumbledore sighed. "However, we need to obtain one first."

"I… um… I know where one is."

The air in the headmaster's office seemed to grow tense with Harry's confession. Dumbledore straightened in his seat, attention focused heavily on Harry. Riddle's smirk vanished.

"Harry, you need to tell me where it is," Dumbledore said firmly. "You of all people must realise the danger of possessing one of Voldemort's Horcruxes."

"I do. I really do," he said with a glance at Riddle. "It's Slytherin's locket. I found it in Grimmauld Place."

"Is it still there?"

"No, I took it. It was in the drawing room and they were going to throw it out when they were clearing stuff up, so I grabbed it. I don't really know why. But now it's in my vault at Gringotts."

"I see," Dumbledore said, looking troubled. "You say you don't know why you took it."

Harry looked down. "No. I just… did. Sticky fingers, I guess. Old habits." He paused. Dumbledore said nothing. "But it gave me nightmares, so I put it in my vault. I didn't really know what else to do with it at the time. But that's good, right? It means we know where one is and now I can destroy it."

Dumbledore didn't respond to that. "What kind of nightmares?"

"Of getting my soul sucked out." He shuddered, vividly recalling the dreams, and didn't look at Riddle. "So should I try to destroy it?"

Dumbledore still looked troubled, but he nodded slowly. "I suppose it's worth trying. I will give Sirius permission to take you to Diagon Alley one afternoon. You can—"

He broke off as Harry Wished for the locket and it appeared in his hands. Dumbledore pursed his lips, whether disapproving or trying not to smile Harry wasn't sure, and held out his hand.

"May I see it?"

" _No!"_ Riddle snarled.

Harry glanced at him, startled, then saw Dumbledore's gaze flick towards the space where Riddle stood. Keeping his expression carefully clear and ignoring Riddle's anger, Harry passed the locket over. Dumbledore lay it on the desk and inspected it, initially just with his hands and eyes and then drawing his wand. Harry tensed when Riddle stalked up to the desk and reached for the locket, but his hand passed straight through.

After several minutes, Dumbledore straightened up and laid his wand aside.

"I'm certainly not surprised it gave you nightmares."

Harry didn't know what to say to that. "I guess I should destroy it now."

"You sound reluctant," Dumbledore noted.

Harry gave a small smile and a shrug. "It's Slytherin's locket. It's a piece of history. History should never be destroyed, that's how we forget things."

"You are quite right. Unfortunately, this piece of history has been desecrated, and to preserve it would be far more detrimental to us all than to destroy it."

"I know."

"If you're amenable," Dumbledore added, "I would like to summon the Assistant to sit in while you do."

"Why?"

"If something should go wrong, he may, ah—" Dumbledore smiled slightly "—be of assistance."

" _Absolutely not,"_ Riddle said.

Harry hesitated, then said, "Okay."

Dumbledore sent off a Patronus message and then spent ten minutes chatting with Harry about his classes until a knock came at the door and the Assistant walked in.

"Evening, folks," he greeted, tapping two fingers to his head in salute and dropping into one of the other chairs.

"Thank you for coming, Assistant," Dumbledore returned. "I hope you weren't busy."

"Nah." He nodded towards the locket on the desk. "I'm guessing that's what this is about. You found it all by yourselves."

"Harry did. I assume you know where."

"I can take a good guess. Black home?"

Harry nodded.

"Yeah, Regulus nicked it back in seventy-nine."

"Sirius' brother?" Harry said, surprised. "Sirius told me he was killed because he wanted to get out of the Death Eaters."

"It was planned, yeah, but they never actually did it," the Assistant said, and told them the story of Regulus stealing the Horcrux. Harry felt a kinship towards the dead man on hearing it. He knew what it was like to want out of the Voldemort's service and working secretly towards killing him. Harry just hoped he didn't end up dead in the process, too.

"So," the Assistant said, "how are you destroying it?"

"I'm going to try," Harry said.

"I wanted you on hand in case something goes wrong," Dumbledore added to the Assistant. "I can hardly summon Poppy to sit in."

The Assistant nodded. As Harry reached for the locket, the Assistant closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them again, they glowed bright green, the same shade as Harry knew his real eyes were, but as if someone had put a lightbulb behind them.

"What is that?" Harry asked, curious, locket in hand now.

"It lets me see magic."

" _See_ magic?" Dumbledore said, leaning forwards on his desk. "What do you mean?"

"Exactly that. I can see magic. Spells and enchantments and every bit of magic all around us. Bit disorientating, especially in here," he said, eyes moving over the portraits on the walls and the various trinkets filling the tables around the office, "but it's useful. I want to see what happens when you destroy the Horcrux."

Riddle moved around from behind Harry, who wondered if he imagined the Assistant's gaze flicking momentarily to Riddle. It was hard to tell exactly where his eyes were focused when they glowed like that.

"Go ahead then, Harry," Dumbledore said, and Harry looked down.

Riddle crouched by Harry and laid his own hands over Harry's, tightening them when Harry tried to pull away.

" _Don't fight me. I'm helping."_

Harry doubted that, but he couldn't say so right then. He knew the feeling got across, however; Riddle was still a part of him and knew what went on in his mind. Harry just preferred to speak aloud to him because it felt like having a one-sided conversation otherwise.

Harry Wished for the Horcrux to break, but nothing happened. He Wished for the piece of soul inside to leave, but still nothing. Riddle's hands tightened around Harry's. Apparently his inability to interact with the Horcrux didn't extend to Harry himself. The locket dug into Harry's palms and fingers, hard.

"Harry," Dumbledore said, reaching for his wand. The Assistant straightened in his seat, staring at Harry's hands.

" _You're fine."_

"I'm fine," Harry said, and grit his teeth as Riddle's hands tightened. The locket's hinge bit into his palm and Harry felt his skin split, a bead of blood seeping over the metal.

" _Open,_ " Riddle said, but the word came out of Harry's mouth in a hiss of Parseltongue.

For the first time in his life, Harry had a seizure that he was aware of as it occurred. He knew there were types of seizures where people kept their awareness, but he just never had them. This time, however, he was aware of his limbs stiffening, of his mouth moving beyond his control, of a numbness in his hands and a sensation in his head that he simply couldn't put into words. For a moment, he thought he saw runes flicker on his hands, the same ones inked on Riddle's. He saw Dumbledore stand and move around the desk, but it happened in slow motion, and his voice, when he spoke, was distorted and indiscernible.

By the time Dumbledore came to crouch in front of Harry, the seizure passed. Riddle moved to the other side of the room. Harry slumped in the chair, hands (clear of any runes) falling open to reveal the locket. His palms were scraped raw, as if he'd fallen hard on gravelly asphalt, little smears of blood all over the emeralds set in the locket, which was undamaged.

"Harry," Dumbledore said softly, taking the locket from him, "how are you feeling?"

"Tired," Harry said truthfully. "My head hurts."

Dumbledore placed the locket on the desk, tapped his wand to Harry's palms one after the other, and the wounds on them healed up. "Do you need to go to the hospital wing?"

"No, I'm okay. I just need a rest. A nap maybe." He managed a small smile that Dumbledore returned.

"If you can wait a short while, I'll send you back to your godfather's once I've examined the locket."

Harry nodded. He would prefer sitting for a moment before having to take the floo, anyway.

Dumbledore returned to his seat. The Assistant's eyes were still glowing, but as Harry looked at him he closed them, and when he opened them again they were back to a perfectly normal blue. He gave Harry a thin smile, but it was lacking somehow.

Dumbledore examined the locket, for less time than he had earlier, and announced, "It's no longer a Horcrux."

"But I didn't break it," Harry pointed out.

"Nonetheless, there's no doubt: This is no longer a Horcrux. The piece of soul inside it is gone." He set it aside and gave Harry a smile. "At least you preserved some history."

Harry smiled at that. Dumbledore looked to the Assistant.

"What did you see?"

The Assistant shrugged. "Nothing very surprising. He forced the soul piece out and they can't survive beyond the host."

"The Parseltongue he spoke?"

"Just telling it to open." He stood up. "If that's all—Albus, Voldemort has left the country, and I've just recalled some business I have to attend to."

"He what?" Harry said, sitting up a bit. "He left?"

"Not for good, I'm sure."

"Assistant, wait," Dumbledore commanded as the Assistant turned to the door. "I need more infor- Assistant!"

Harry watched the Assistant's cloak disappear through the door and it clicked shut behind him. "I don't think he's coming back."

Dumbledore frowned at the door for a moment before turning his attention back to Harry. Something must have shown on his face because Dumbledore's frown was replaced with a smile. If Harry hadn't seen him frowning seconds before, he might have believed it was genuine.

"Do not worry yourself about Voldemort. We've just taken a good step towards defeating him."

Harry nodded, but he definitely would worry. Voldemort seemed very focused on dominating England; why would he leave now?

"May I be excused?" he asked.

"Yes, of course. Can you manage the floo?"

Harry stood, felt steady enough, and nodded. He said goodbye, took some floo powder, and stepped through the fire. He staggered when he came out in Sirius and James' rooms, almost falling. Only James was there, sat on the sofa with a copy of the Quibbler.

"Alright?"

Harry nodded, walking over and dropping down beside him. "Minor seizure."

"Do you need to go to the hospital wing?"

Harry shook his head, laying on his side and curling up, tucking his feet under him and resting his head on the arm of the sofa. "Just a quick nap before I go back down to Slytherin."

If James said anything in reply, he didn't hear it, already fast asleep.


	47. Chapter 47

**Chapter 47**

It took Harry less than two days to realise something was wrong. Something had been wrong ever since he started seeing Riddle, but since destroying the locket Horcrux the hallucination seemed more real, in some way Harry couldn't properly explain. He also woke up on Tuesday night to find Nyneve's journal and his own translation open on his bed, as if he'd been working on it in his sleep. Between that and the memory loss the morning he made his Horcrux, he was forced to admit something he hadn't even let himself think earlier.

He was possessed. Again.

He wasn't sure how it happened. He'd been seeing Riddle since before destroying the Horcrux, which seemed the most obvious time for possession to occur. The other option was it happened when Harry first took the locket in Grimmauld Place, but nothing significant had changed then. He wasn't seeing Riddle, but he was already hearing the voice, which seemed to be the precursor to the visual hallucination.

But he started hearing the voice after Crouch put the Imperius Curse on him. Had he done something else at that time that Harry didn't notice? Was it some other sneaking plan of Voldemort's? Was this the real reason Voldemort went to such efforts to get Harry to join the Death Eaters—to have him close by as the possession took control of Harry and left him for dead?

Except that didn't match what Harry recently learned about Voldemort, a man who only trusted himself and no one else. Harry might be possessed by a part of Voldemort, but Harry didn't think the man as he was now would trust even a separate part of his own soul.

The most terrifying thought was that he'd never stopped being possessed. It occurred to him when he saw Riddle interacting with objects—he could pick things up now and move them about—and Harry remembered the Assistant's words when he destroyed the Horcrux: _'He forced the soul piece out and they can't survive beyond the host.'_

Harry knew that was true from his own Horcrux research, but his experience with the diary was evidence enough that the soul piece could survive by possessing a person. What if, when he forced the piece out of the locket, it didn't die but entered Harry? What if the same thing happened with the diary? Snape had destroyed it, true, but if the soul piece had left and taken refuge in Harry, then the diary would have been just an empty container when it was pierced by the basilisk fang.

The thought terrified him and he tried to convince himself it wasn't true because nothing had happened after the events of the Chamber of Secrets. Surely if he'd been possessed in all that time, there would have been _some_ sign of it before he started hearing the voice over a year later?

" _So you're wrong,"_ Riddle said. _"You're not possessed. Just plain crazy."_

Somehow, that wasn't convincing.

He was thankful that at least there wasn't a basilisk to set on his unwitting classmates, but his joy at that was diminished with the thought that Riddle had almost completely overtaken him the morning he'd made his Horcrux. He was sure of it—he'd seen those runes on his hands in Dumbledore's office, and when he concentrated really hard he could make them reappear again for a second. When he did, they would vanish from Riddle, until Riddle slapped his hands and the marks switched again.

He remembered, too, how easy it had been to Apparate at his last lesson; with the runes tattooed on him, the cuffs he wore would have been useless and that was why it'd come so easily to him. Those had to have been done the morning of 1st March. So if Riddle could possess him then, what was to stop him doing it again?

Realising all this didn't mean he could do anything about it, however. When he took Draco to Spinner's End on Wednesday night for another Occlumency lesson, he wanted to take Snape aside afterwards to tell him about it (and beg for help and advice), but as Snape and Draco prepared to practice, Riddle walked up and laid a hand on the back of Draco's neck.

Draco twitched.

Riddle's gaze never left Harry's as he trailed his fingers down the curve of Draco's spine, making Draco shudder lightly.

Harry burst out of his seat. Riddle stepped away, smirking, and Draco and Snape looked at Harry oddly.

" _Not a word, or your darling Draco gets more than a shiver down his spine."_

"Harry?" Draco said.

"Drink," Harry croaked, and fled to the kitchen. He shut the door behind him and leant against it, glaring at Riddle. "Don't ever touch him again," he said in a low voice.

" _Then don't tell anyone about me."_

"You're possessing me," Harry said, despair in his voice, suddenly deathly certain of the fact. However it happened, whether it was since the Chamber of Secrets or only for the past two days, Riddle was more than just a hallucination. "You'll kill me."

Riddle sauntered up to him, cradling Harry's face in both hands. He was colder than before, an unpleasant chill against Harry's cheeks. _"I won't kill you. You're my host. If you die, I die. So don't die."_

Harry shuddered, shoved him away. He fetched a glass of water, returned to the living room, and spent the next two hours watching Draco and Snape work. Any time he even thought of trying to find a way to tell Snape about Riddle, the hallucination would step up to one of them and send a chill through them, until it actually reached the point where Snape gave a muttered curse about draughty houses. After that, Harry tried to stop thinking at all.

* * *

 _My father's dead._

Harry looked up from the note that had floated over to his desk in History of Magic on Friday morning. He glanced at Binns, who didn't appear to have noticed, and then across at Theo, who was watching him. Harry gave him a confused look. Theo wrote something on the bottom of his parchment, tore it off, checked Binns and then sent the scrap of parchment floating over to Harry.

 _I'm not stupid. You've attacked me twice this year for no other reason except I spoke to you. I know that I sound like my father, I know that he was a Death Eater, I know that you were kidnapped last summer. It doesn't take a genius to put the dots together. I thought you might appreciate knowing he died._

Harry read the note and frowned across the room, but Theo kept his eyes forwards. Harry tore a corner off his own parchment.

 _You don't seem all that upset._

He watched Theo as the note drifted over to set down at his elbow, saw Theo's mouth quirk up slightly, but the smile was wry, unamused. He considered the message for a while, long enough that Harry thought he wasn't going to respond, then turned it over and wrote a short reply.

 _I'm really not._

Harry didn't know what to say to that, but he suddenly remembered the Assistant's comments about Frederick having 'his favourite punching bag' back, and Frederick's bold admittance that he disciplined his son. Harry had been entirely too worried about himself to think about it at the time, but now he couldn't help wondering just how far Frederick's 'discipline' went. Harry couldn't imagine he would rape his own son, but had Theo grown up in a home like the Dursleys? Had Frederick ever gotten as violent with him as Vernon got with Harry? They were wizards so they could have healed and hidden the abuse even if things were that bad. Had Theo put up with that for seventeen years?

Harry sent a message to Snape letting him know about Nott's death. When he and Draco went to Spinner's End the next night, Snape took Harry to the kitchen and poured them both a glass of wine.

"To revenge," he toasted quietly.

Harry drank, sipping at it where Snape downed it in one go. When Snape went to the sink to rinse his glass out, Harry blurted, "I don't feel better."

Snape turned to him, but Harry kept his gaze down, fingering the glass, afraid of what Snape would say.

"I'm glad he's dead, but it doesn't make me feel better."

"I know," Snape said softly, and Harry dared glance up. He felt a deep relief at seeing that Snape looked no happier than he felt and showed no sign of anger or disappointment that Harry wasn't jumping for joy.

"It doesn't undo what he did," Harry said.

"No," Snape agreed, "but at least he can never do it again, and that's better than nothing."

"What was that about?" Draco asked when they returned to the living room.

"A family matter, Draco," Snape replied dismissively. "Let's begin."

* * *

On 23rd March, the first Sunday of the Easter holiday, the sixth years who turned seventeen on or before 21st April got to go to Hogsmeade for extra Apparition lessons. Neither Harry or Draco fell into the group, giving them the sixth year dorm all to themselves. Draco hoped to make the most of it and was openly disappointed when Harry refused, focusing instead on his homework. He felt a little guilty, because it wasn't like he was opposed to getting intimate with Draco again, he just didn't want to do it while being watched by Riddle.

"Fine, I'm going patrolling," Draco said shortly, stalking towards the door. Harry almost called him back, but Riddle cut him off.

" _Let him sulk on his own."_

"It's your fault," Harry hissed quietly, aware Draco might still hear him out in the hallway. "It wouldn't have happened if you weren't around."

" _You have better things to do with your time than shag,"_ Riddle sneered. _"You don't even care about sex that much; I'm a perfect excuse for you to not bother with it any more. Take the opportunity to do some undistracted work. Finish your homework and then work on Nyneve's journal."_

"No. You don't get to tell me what to do."

Riddle's eyes narrowed and Harry scrambled up from his bed.

" _I'll tell you what. You translate a couple of pages of the journal, and I'll sit back quietly while you spend some time with your precious Draco. I won't speak. I won't even look. You'll hardly know I'm there."_

Harry eyed him suspiciously. "What do you care if I translate the journal?"

Riddle sauntered forwards, lightly tapping a finger against Harry's chest. _"It's just getting fascinating. All this talk about souls and how to make them inhabit the dead? It's thrilling."_

Harry stepped back, hit the wall between his bed and Draco's. "I don't trust you."

" _You don't trust yourself?"_

"You're not me."

" _I come from you. So you think I'm truly some possession by Tom Riddle—I'm still part of you, still inside your head, still influenced by you. If you distrust me, you distrust yourself."_

"Then maybe I do," Harry said.

" _Don't be ridiculous, now."_

"I'm not. I killed my aunt without meaning to, I don't remember what I did that morning after killing my uncle, or working on the journal that day after destroying the locket. Now you're all interested in it?"

" _So what? Do you think I could spend so long in your head and not be influenced by you? I'm only interested because you are."_

Harry shook his head. "I don't believe that. I don't care about Nyneve's work with souls, I'm more interested in her relationship with Merlin."

" _Part of you cares. The part of you that's me. And if you're going to be difficult—"_

He lunged forward and shoved his hand through Harry's chest. It went through like a ghost's and was just as cold. Harry felt it wrap around his heart and he gasped. He grabbed at Riddle, clutching his shoulders while his body spasmed, legs going weak. Riddle went down with him as he slid to the floor, hand never leaving Harry's chest.

" _I can kill you, Harry,"_ he said, voice a soft caress at odds with the violent pain he was causing. _"I can freeze your heart and steal the breath from your lungs."_

He jerked his hand back and Harry whined, coughed, sucked in a deep breath. Riddle's hand grabbed his hair, jerked his head back, and leant in close. There was no air from him to rush over Harry's face, though his mouth was mere inches from Harry's.

" _Just do as I say and it will make life much easier for both of us."_

He let go and Harry slumped, massaging his chest and staring up at him. A part of him thought he should just get up, take the journal, and get to work. His own mind was attacking him and that was utterly terrifying, but Riddle had betrayed himself with his words.

"You won't kill me"

Riddle cocked his head. _"Oh?"_

"You're part of me. If you kill me, you die as well. You said it yourself."

Riddle smirked. _"That may be, but I can still hurt you, as I just proved. Do you want me to hurt you again?"_

Before Harry could reply, the door slammed open.

"I've had a thought," Draco said, and then saw Harry. He rushed over, dropping to a crouch in front of him. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Harry said, dropping the hand rubbing at his chest. Draco didn't look convinced. "Just a panic attack. But I'm fine, really."

Draco pulled him into a hug that Harry gladly returned, eying Riddle warily. Riddle stood behind Draco, a look of extreme irritation on his face.

" _Get rid of him. You have work to do."_

Harry closed his eyes, squeezing Draco tighter.

"Are you sure—"

Draco choked. Harry snapped his eyes open, saw Riddle pushing his hand into the back of Draco's neck—and then Riddle flew across the room, crashing into Blaise Zabini's bed so hard it fell to pieces.

Draco gasped and Harry drew back, cradling his face. "Draco? Draco, talk to me, are you alright?"

Draco blinked, lifting a hand to his throat, eyes wide. "I… I think so. I don't know what just happened." He swallowed thickly, coughed weakly. "It was like someone tried to choke me."

Harry looked past him to Riddle, climbing out of the wreckage of the bed. Harry Wished and ropes wrapped around him, binding Riddle from neck to ankle.

Draco glanced around, looking over Blaise's bed. "Harry, why'd you break the bed? Did you…"

"I didn't hurt you," Harry said, surprised at how steady his voice came out, because it was a part of him that _had_ hurt Draco and that horrified him more than Riddle attacking him.

Draco looked from the bed back to him. "You only break things when you're angry. Why are you angry? Is it because of me?"

"No," Harry replied immediately. He kissed Draco, soft and chaste, then rested their foreheads together. "I'm not angry at you. I'm angry at letting a stupid voice inside my head tell me what to do."

" _How dare you—"_ Riddle's voice cut off as Harry gagged him, not even bothering to look over. Harry might not be able to make him disappear, but he could attack him just as Riddle did.

"What do you mean?" Draco asked.

Harry didn't answer, just kissed him. He would not let this monster possessing him attack the most important person in his life. He would not let Riddle control him.

Sometime later, Harry and Draco lay on Harry's bed, enlarged to be more comfortable for them both. Blaise's bed was fixed and Riddle sat on it, untied and furious, but keeping his silence.

"That was…" Draco said, breathing hard, skin still beaded with sweat, sprawled on his front.

Harry lay on his side and looked at him, worried. "I'm sorry, I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"No, you didn't. It was just… unexpected. I thought you didn't like topping that much."

"I don't. I just…"

"I'm not complaining," Draco assured him, resting his head on his folded arms and grinning at Harry. "I'm just surprised. All this because the voice in your head was being a twat again?"

Riddle snarled. Harry ignored him.

"I'm not letting it tell me what to do."

Draco's grin faded a bit. "Does it usually?"

"It tries to sometimes. But not with you." He leant into Draco, kissing his bare shoulder. "You're mine."

The grin widened again. "I like that. As long as you're mine, too."

"Forever."

Draco kissed him hard, then said reluctantly, "We should probably clean up before everyone else starts coming back. I'm gonna go shower."

Harry nodded and sat up, watching Draco get to his feet. As he threw on some robes and collected his wash things, Harry suddenly remembered something.

"Hey, what was your thought earlier?"

"Huh?"

"When you came back to the dorm, you said you'd had a thought."

"Did I? Oh yeah." He straightened up, towel over his shoulder and washbag hanging from his hand. "Actually, it's not really a big deal."

Harry was curious now. "What was it?"

Draco shuffled his feet. "Well, when I started patrolling, I came across Lyle shagging a girl in one of the classrooms."

"Oh," Harry said, and tried not to think too clearly about that. "Is that all?"

"No," Draco said slowly. "I… I got thinking. It doesn't matter now, seeing as we…" He gestured vaguely at the bed. "But I thought, seeing as you didn't seem to want to do anything and seeing as you like watching people, I thought… maybe you'd like to watch me. With someone else."

Harry blinked and very carefully didn't think of old dreams about Draco and Tyler.

"Don't take it the wrong way," Draco added quickly, moving over to sit back on the bed and reach for Harry's hand. "I love you, you know that, right? Completely and totally, and I absolutely do _not_ want to leave you and I will never, ever cheat on you, so please, please don't think that."

"I won't," Harry assured him. "But that idea…"

Draco thumped his washbag on the bed and stared at it. "It was just an idea. I know I was kind of grouchy with you earlier. I didn't mean to be." He paused, then sounded guilty when he said, "But I'm sixteen and horny and I couldn't help getting frustrated. But it's not your fault. Please don't think I'm pressuring you because I'm not. I would never do that. You know that, right?"

Harry squeezed his hand. "I do. I know you'd never do anything like that to me. I…" He looked down as well, smiling wryly. "I get it. I mean, I don't really because I just… sex isn't that big a thing to me, but I get that it is for everyone else and you want it more than me so you're going to get frustrated about not getting any. I won't be mad at you for that. It's normal."

"Hey." Draco tucked a finger under his chin and lifted his head. "Just because you don't want it as much doesn't mean you're not normal."

Harry smiled. "Maybe. I think there's so much about me that's not normal that it's probably hard to see what is and what isn't."

Draco considered that. "Yeah, I have to agree with that," he said, and laughed when Harry lightly punched his shoulder. "You said it first."

Harry stuck his tongue out, but then looked down at the hand Draco still held. "So… you don't want to do that? Y'know, what you suggested. With Tyler."

"Do _you_ want to?"

Harry glanced up, biting his lip. "I've dreamt about it," he admitted.

"What, me and Lyle?"

Harry nodded.

"That's… kind of hot, actually."

"So, you want to have sex with him?"

"I'd rather have sex with you. That's sex that means something. But if it's just a meaningless shag, then yeah I'd probably go for Lyle. He's pretty and he's the school broomstick so he should be pretty good at it by now."

"That's not very nice."

Draco shrugged. "Completely true, though. Do you want to do it then?"

Harry felt a bit guilty for wanting it, even though it was Draco's suggestion, but he couldn't resist. "Yes. Only if you don't mind."

"I don't. Like I said, I'd prefer sex with you, but if you don't want it that much then this seems like a good way for me to get laid and keep you happy."

Harry nodded and couldn't help smiling at the thought. Just thinking about Draco and Tyler was enough to get him excited.

"Pity he's not around, I could have another go right now," Draco said, leaning in to nuzzle Harry behind the ear. "Looks like you could too."

Harry squirmed slightly. He probably could, though he didn't really care either way.

" _No! That's enough!"_

Harry snapped his gaze to Riddle, who was rising from Blaise's bed, and narrowed his eyes. Riddle dropped back down, struggled a moment against an invisible force, then fell back, bound with ropes again. Harry lifted a hand to tangle in Draco's hair, tugging his head around so he could kiss him.

"Fuck me?" he murmured against Draco's mouth.

He wasn't sure it was really right to have sex just to spite Riddle, but he didn't care. Riddle had been bugging him for weeks and Harry finally had the upper hand; he was damn well going to do as he pleased.

Later, when Draco finally went to shower and Harry put the room back to normal before their dormmates really did come back, Riddle stalked over, standing toe to toe with Harry and jabbing a finger in his chest.

" _Don't think that just because you tied me down today means you've won."_

Harry lifted his chin. "I can hurt you," he said quietly. "I might not be able to get rid of you, but I can hurt you."

" _I can make your life_ _ **miserable**_ _,"_ Riddle snarled.

"I know. But you're not terrorising me anymore. I have to live with you, but you're not in charge. I am. I'll spend more time on Nyneve's journal, but you have to stop attacking me, and if you touch Draco ever again, I _will_ tell someone about you and they'll get you out of my head."

Riddle's snarl faded. He stepped back, folded his arms over his chest, ran his eyes over Harry consideringly.

" _Alright. You've developed a backbone, I can respect that. I'll give you your peace with Draco, though Merlin only knows why you want to waste time on this crap, but if you don't spend enough time on that journal then I'll start getting difficult again."_

"Attack me again and I'll throw it in the fire."

Riddle smirked. _"No, you won't. You could never bring yourself to destroy it."_

"I'll send it back to Lucius," Harry threatened. He hated the thought, but he'd do it if he had to.

The smirk vanished. _"Fine."_

"Good," Harry said, and collected his things to go shower as well.

* * *

The Assistant was lying on the floor of his cave smoking a joint when Albus arrived. A fire burned in the centre and the Assistant lay on an inflatable mattress, dressed only in boxers and a dressing gown that wasn't closed properly, and the collar he always wore now. His chest was marked with scabbed over wounds, like someone had attacked him with a whip.

"What happened to you?" Albus asked, genuinely concerned.

The Assistant didn't open his eyes. "Preston."

Albus' concern turned to full worry. "Yaxley? He has power over you again?"

"He always has power over me, Albus, but no, he's not running around giving me orders. I just let him beat me up and fuck me occasionally. Makes him feel better."

Albus frowned. He wanted to object to the Assistant allowing himself to be used like that, but he was well aware he had no place to say such things. He and the Assistant were not friends and Albus couldn't even claim age-related wisdom, nor could he speak on how a person under control of the Animancupium should handle their Master.

The most he could do was offer, "Do you need any medical help?"

The Assistant took a deep drag on his joint. "This is enough. You want something?"

"You've been avoiding me. You've sent no reports on Voldemort."

The Assistant stared up at him, taking another drag on his joint, then said, "He's still out of the country, and I quit."

"You _quit_?"

"Yes."

Albus stalked up to him, standing directly over the prone man to demand, "Why?"

"Because you've lost this war, Albus. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news." He flicked the end of his joint into the fire.

"Why do you say that? Do you know something of what Voldemort's doing out of the country?"

"No. Don't even know where he's gone, but I know other things. I know where this is all headed, and you won't come out on top. Even if you lived, you wouldn't come out on top."

"You think I'll die."

"I _know_ you'll die."

Albus liked to think he was ready and prepared to meet his end, but he was only human and some part of him railed at being told his death was so assured.

But all he said was, "What about Harry?"

The Assistant shrugged, grimaced. "Might live a bit longer than you, but he's dead too."

"You don't believe he'll defeat Voldemort?"

The Assistant rolled his eyes. "He's a Horcrux. Let's be open about it, Albus. He has to be killed before Voldemort can be and the chances of him surviving are next to nothing. I know all about your little theory on sacrifice and him surviving under the right circumstances, but the chance of it working in this instance is so slim you need a microscope to see it."

Albus smiled. "It's better than no chance at all." He paused as the Assistant snorted, then asked, "Would things go differently if you interfered?"

"Of course," he replied, but gave Albus a dark look. "But I won't. I'm done, Albus. I'm out. No more spying, no more interfering. The rest is up to you lot."

Albus considered him. The Assistant stared back, like he was trying to glare Albus into submission. It was entirely possible he could, though Albus felt no pressure on his Occlumency shields.

"So be it," he said, not attempting to hide his disappointment. "I cannot force you."

"No," the Assistant said harshly, "you can't."

"I would only ask two things," Albus said, and the Assistant's gaze narrowed. "May I have the other Horcruxes?"

The Assistant shook his head. "Get the kid to Wish for them when he destroys them. The diadem and the ring are both safe enough to summon. Hufflepuff's cup is in the Lestrange Gringotts vault, but Harry's Wish Magic should get it out undetected. How you deal with Nagini is up to you."

Albus let several long moments of silence pass then, but when it became clear the Assistant would say nothing else, he asked, "And Harry?"

The Assistant shrugged. "Deal with him how you like. I won't be involved in your schemes to handle him. Bugger off, Albus. We're done."

"Very well. But I would also like to know if my death is set for an exact date."

The Assistant's expression softened slightly at that. "Thirteenth of June," he answered, tone non-confrontational now.

Albus nodded. "Thank you. I wish you the best, Assistant."

He held out his hand. The Assistant sat up and shook it, and Albus walked out, mind already whirring with plans. His death might be assured—that was no surprise—but that didn't mean the war against Voldemort was lost, no matter what the Assistant believed. Albus had hope.

More than that, he had plans.

* * *

Asking Tyler to have sex with Draco so Harry could watch was one of the most embarrassing things he'd ever done. He let Draco do most of the talking and just stood beside him, face flushed and eyes down.

Tyler, perhaps not surprisingly, was completely up for it, but Harry was confused when Tyler said it would be his first time.

"But you've already had sex. A lot, apparently."

"With girls," Tyler said. "None of the blokes ever agree to go that far. Which is weird given that we're supposed to be the sex obsessed ones, but whatever. When can we do it?"

The Easter holidays was the obvious time. They used the Room of Requirement for it; there were too many students staying over the holiday for them to risk doing it in the dorms, and Draco utterly refused to do it in a classroom, as was Tyler's suggestion.

Harry went in first, conjuring a room different to the one he and Draco usually used—instead of dark walls and a circular bed with a soft fire there was a queen-size bed in a light room well-lit by torches. Harry settled himself in the corner, initially standing, then conjuring a chair to sit in, and turned invisible. He wanted to watch, but he didn't want to be seen watching.

He felt a bit apprehensive as he sat waiting for Draco and Tyler to arrive. Riddle, for now, was sitting out of the way and promising not to be an annoyance, but Harry had no idea if he would stay that way. Even if Riddle didn't ruin things, Harry was afraid it would just be awkward or weird or something. It was always nice to imagine these things, but reality rarely matched up to fantasy.

He needn't have worried. Draco and Tyler entered the room already kissing, barely pausing to look around and take it in. Even just that was enough to focus all Harry's attention so he forgot about potential awkwardness.

"Where is he?" Tyler asked as the two moved over to the bed, tugging at each other's clothes.

Draco glanced around. "Somewhere. I hope you're not going to be chatty this whole time."

"Give me something else to do with my mouth and I won't."

Harry bit back a soft moan at that, even though they wouldn't have heard him. Even if not hidden from sight and sound, Draco's murmured, " _Fuck,_ " and Tyler's laugh would have drowned out the noise. Harry watched them fall onto the bed, hands clenching on his own thighs as he watched them undress each other. He hadn't been involved in whatever other discussions they'd had about this, so he had no idea who would top or what they were planning to do, which he decided was better. Not knowing exactly what was coming made the whole thing more exciting.

It was as good as he imagined, if somewhat different. Tyler, who bottomed, was a lot more confident and vigorous in his actions than Harry had imagined, egging Draco on and showing no signs of embarrassment or hesitation about anything. He was also a lot more vocal than either Harry or Draco, and the whole situation was noisier than Harry expected, but it didn't detract too much from the experience. It certainly didn't stop Harry getting ridiculously turned on, but he didn't slip a hand into his robes. It was Draco's only condition of what they were doing; Harry wasn't allowed to touch himself so that Draco could get him off afterwards.

Tyler fell asleep almost immediately once they were done. When his breathing was steady and Draco sat up to look around the room, Harry made himself visible. Draco looked him over, smiling lazily.

"You enjoyed that then."

Harry could only nod. Draco beckoned and, somewhat awkwardly, Harry stumbled over and sat on the bed, glancing at Tyler to make sure he didn't wake up. Without a word, Draco kissed Harry, pushing him over to lay down and unbuttoning his robe. Harry had to stuff a fist in his mouth to stifle his cries as Draco went down on him, desperately trying not to move too much and risk waking up Tyler.

After, Draco crawled back up Harry's body, kissing him once more, long and deep, before collapsing beside him, slinging an arm over Harry's torso and sighing contentedly as he nestled against Harry's side.

"I prefer fucking you," Draco murmured, "but that was good fun."

"You want to do it again sometime?" Harry asked, bringing a hand up to run his fingers through Draco's hair.

Draco lifted his head to look him in the eye. "Only as long as this isn't a replacement. I still want times with you, alone."

"We will," Harry promised, and Draco smiled, then dropped his head back down and drifted off to sleep.

* * *

Two weeks into the holiday, Harry received a message from Dumbledore asking if he felt capable of dealing with another Horcrux. He was tempted to say no, but it would only draw questions. He briefly considered mentioning his possession, but he dismissed the idea, despite rather than because of threats from Riddle. He thought it might be a good idea to tell someone, but he didn't trust Dumbledore anywhere near enough.

He sent a return message saying he would destroy the Horcrux, but he privately decided he would do it with Fiendfyre. He researched it in the library the afternoon before going to see Dumbledore, and was sure he could control it. Hopefully if he destroyed it like that, it wouldn't give power to his possession like the locket did.

"I hope you've had a good holiday," Dumbledore greeted when Harry arrived at his office on Thursday, gesturing for Harry to take a seat. "All ready for the new term on Monday?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good, good," Dumbledore smiled. "I'm afraid the Assistant has other business to attend to today, but he's informed me that it's safe enough to retrieve Marvolo Guant's ring using your Wish Magic, and as you managed it without trouble last time I feel safe overlooking today alone."

He paused. Harry, somewhat reluctantly, thought of the ring he'd seen in the memories and Wished for it. It appeared on Dumbledore's desk with a small clatter. Dumbledore drew his wand and examined it just as he had the locket, but for longer, or perhaps it just seemed that way. Eventually he pushed it across the desk.

"If you would."

Cautiously, Harry reached for it. He wanted to use Fiendfyre, but he didn't want to accidentally burn the headmaster's desk to ashes in the process.

But as soon as he touched the ring, Riddle was on him. His hands latched over Harry's, holding fast even when Harry tried to jerk away, tightening Harry's grip around the ring. The edges were blunted by time, but not so much they couldn't dig into his palm hard enough to draw blood. Harry grabbed at Riddle's wrist with his free hand, uncaring of how it looked to Dumbledore, who snatched up his wand and stood. Harry opened his mouth to say something—ask for help, tell him what was happening, _anything_ —but like last time, Riddle spoke and the word came out of Harry's own mouth in a hiss.

" _Mine._ "

* * *

The next thing Harry knew, he was waking up in the Hospital Wing. Draco sat on one side of his bed, clasping one of Harry's hands in his own, and Hermione and Neville were on the other. Harry couldn't remember what happened, but the familiar headache, the lingering taste of a Mouth Freshening Charm, and generally feeling like crap were clear signs he'd had a seizure. A bad one, too, if he was waking up the Hospital Wing instead of on the floor somewhere.

"Hey, you alright?"

It's Draco who spoke, one hand leaving Harry's to come up and brush against Harry's face. Relief spread across Hermione and Neville's faces when they saw him awake.

"Why the welcoming party?" Harry asked weakly.

"You had four seizures all in a row," Draco told him.

"We were really worried about you," Hermione said, sitting on the edge of her seat to get closer to him. "They lasted for ages. Madam Pomfrey was going to call Saint Mungo's."

"Oh. What happened? I normally need a trigger for something that bad."

Hermione and Neville exchanged worried looks. Draco looked annoyed.

"We don't know," Hermione said. "Neville and I were just leaving Gryffindor when we saw Professor Dumbledore rushing you along on a stretcher."

"I met you by the library," Draco added.

"I guess I'll find out later," Harry said.

"I'm going to fetch Madam Pomfrey," Hermione said. "She wanted to know when you woke up."

When Pomfrey checked him over and declared him fine but in need of rest, she shooed his friends out. Draco tried to insist on staying but there was no arguing with the stern matron. Harry squeezed his hand, gave a tiny smile, and assured Draco he'd be fine. Draco left reluctantly, Pomfrey returned to her office, and Harry was left with Riddle.

"What happened?" he murmured, eyes closed.

" _The ring. We dealt with the ring."_ He sounded smug. Harry didn't want to see his expression.

"So you're possessing me even more now. How long before you attack me this time?"

The bed shifted and coldness seeped into his side. He opened his eyes to find Riddle beside him, laying precariously in the small space between Harry and the edge of the bed. He propped his head up on one hand and used the other to trail his fingers gently over Harry's forehead. Despite the chill, it was surprisingly soothing.

" _I realise I was unnecessarily sharp with you before. I'm sorry about that."_

"Sharp?" Harry repeated incredulously. "You attacked me. You attacked Draco!"

" _For which I apologise. The incident with the locket went to my head a bit. I shouldn't have behaved like I did."_

"Do you really expect me to believe this? I just had four seizures because of you."

Riddle looked genuinely distressed about that. _"I never meant for that to happen. I only wanted to deal with the ring, but you fought me."_

"Oh, so it's my fault?"

" _We're both to blame."_

Harry snorted, closed his eyes and turned his head away from Riddle. "I don't know what game you're playing, but it won't work. Shut up and go away; I want to sleep."

Riddle's hand passed once more over his brow, then it and the presence at his side withdrew, and Harry slept.

* * *

When Harry woke, the ward was bright with light and Sirius was snoozing in the chair by the bed. Pomfrey was bent over Harry, examining him, and she smiled when he looked at her.

"Good to see you awake, Mr Evans. How are you feeling?"

"Alright. What time is it?"

"Eleven o'clock. I'll keep you until lunch, then you can go."

She finished her check and left him. The snap of her office door closing jerked Sirius out of his doze and he pulled out a pack of cards, and the two of them spent the next hour playing and chatting. It was nice. Riddle kept quiet, sitting to one side and not making nasty comments about Harry wasting his time on frivolous activities. Harry didn't believe it made his words the night before anymore genuine.

Pomfrey brought them both lunch, but Dumbledore turned up just as they were finishing, catching them before Pomfrey released Harry.

Sirius glowered at him. "What are you doing here?"

Harry gave him a surprised look. He'd never imagined Sirius would be so rude to Dumbledore.

Dumbledore didn't look concerned. "I was hoping to have a quick word with Harry."

"You had enough words with him last night, I think."

"I quite understand your anger, Sirius, and I am very sorry for the unfortunate outcome of last night's activities. However, I still need to speak with Harry."

Sirius folded his arms over his chest and sat back. "So talk."

"I was hoping to do so privately."

Sirius just glared.

"Sirius," Harry said. "It's fine, really."

"You were nearly hospitalised, kid."

"Not the first time, Sirius. I'm fine, really. Madam Pomfrey said I'm okay, so if he needs to talk to me…"

Sirius scowled heavily. Harry held his gaze. Sirius sighed. He stood up, ruffled Harry's hair, then turned on Dumbledore and pointed a finger at his chest.

"You make him seize again and you and me are having _words_."

Dumbledore nodded solemnly. "Of course."

Sirius left and Dumbledore took his vacated seat. Harry collected up the cards they'd been playing with, sorting them into a neat stack.

"What does Sirius think happened last night?"

"I told him you were handling a dark magic object."

"Well it's true and it's not your fault I seized. It happens, he knows that."

"Parental figures can get very protective when their children are sick."

"He worries too much."

Dumbledore gave a small smile. "I think in this case it was justified. Are you recovered alright?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you remember what happened before your seizure?"

"Not really," Harry admitted. "It was the ring, wasn't it? Did I get the Horcrux out of it?"

"You became quite distressed first, speaking rapidly in Parseltongue, cornering yourself and clutching it possessively. You wouldn't let me get near enough to help, though I rather felt it wasn't me you were trying to keep it from. You remember none of this?"

Harry shook his head and didn't look at Riddle. Dumbledore sighed softly.

"No matter. At least the ring is destroyed."

"Destroyed? I actually broke it this time?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so." Dumbledore looked bothered by the fact, but Harry didn't care. The ring had no history to it. "However I think it would be best if you didn't destroy any others like that. I've no wish to see you hospitalised for this."

"They need destroying."

"We have other methods of doing so," Dumbledore said firmly. "Methods that do not put your already precarious health at risk. I do not object to you helping," he added, "but I don't wish you to destroy them as you have the last two."

Harry nodded an agreement, but doubted Riddle would let that happen, no matter how nice he was pretending to be now.


	48. Chapter 48

**Chapter 48**

On Saturday morning before the last term began, Harry received a letter from Dumbledore asking that he return the magic suppressing cuffs after his Apparition lesson. He was curious, but didn't worry about it too much; they were useless against him now, so he didn't have to worry about Dumbledore turning on him.

He Wished them away after the lesson and promptly forgot about them at lunch. A storm from the night before had cleared up, leaving the roof above them clear blue and bright. Harry was being appealed on to provide a History of Magic tutoring session to the fifth years, given out on the grounds. Harry had no objection to it, he was just surprised they cared enough to want it. Few jobs required a passing grade in History and those that did weren't popular, so a lot of people weren't concerned about failing.

But all talk of afternoon plans halted when everyone suddenly sprouted either feather wings or cats ears and a tail. Confusion reigned for a minute. Several people got slapped in the face by wings, yelps of pain rang out as people's tails got trod or sat on, and one first year managed to get herself airborne for a few seconds before dropping back down to land in a dish of salad.

A bang and a burst of purple and silver sparks drew their attention to the head table as Professor Dumbledore stood up. His wings were tucked neatly against his back, feathers the same white as his hair and beard. Next to him, McGonagall had cats ears and a tail just like her Animagus form, and on her other side Sirius was fingering his own fluffy black ears and shooting James disgruntled looks. James had black wings and was drinking a cup of tea and looking thoroughly pleased with himself, so Harry guessed he was responsible for all this.

Harry himself had a sleek black tail and ears and was holding down one of Draco's wings to keep it from knocking him off the bench.

"In the interests of safety, I am forbidding flying inside the castle," Dumbledore announced, to groans of objection. "Our new appendages are expected to last until dinner. Professor Potter and Madam Hooch have kindly agreed to provide supervised flying lessons on the Quidditch pitch to those who'd like them. Anyone found flying without supervision will receive a detention and loss of house points. I would ask that everyone please consider your new space requirements, and be cautious of others' wings and tails. Damage to anyone's new body parts will be harmful and dangerous, and anyone who does purposely cause harm will be punished with the same severity as any other bodily harm would be."

The tutoring session was put off until the next morning. Harry instead spent the afternoon with several other cat-endowed students watching those with wings practice flying. Or, in the case of Neville, stand on the ground and try to get his wings under control. Draco was already in the air, swooping about with as much skill as did on a broom.

Harry sat in the stands with Hermione, who had a bushy brown tail tucked neatly against her side; Cid, whose tail was surprisingly short and ears decidedly floppy; and Tyler, who was sulking about having wings. He found flying with them just as nausea-inducing as any other form of travel faster than running.

"I quite like it," Hermione said.

"I could do without," Harry replied, tail twitching behind him, trying to avoid Riddle's cold hands. He wasn't trying to be harmful, just annoying.

"It's just a bit of fun," Hermione countered with a smile. "You look quite adorable with cat ears."

Harry huffed.

He didn't mind it so much later that afternoon when he was curled on Draco's lap, securely wrapped in a cocoon of platinum blond feathers, tail tucked against his body and out of Riddle's reach. They sat by the lake and Harry was warm, comfortable, and perfectly content to remain there if only—

"Stop playing with my ears."

"But they're so fluffy," Draco said with a grin as Harry's ears twitched in annoyance. "Can you hear with them?"

"No, it's all going through my normal ears, but if you seriously don't stop playing with them I'm going to pull out one of your feathers."

"That's mean," Draco pouted, but dropped his hand to Harry's lap instead.

They didn't speak again for half an hour, when the wings and tail disappeared to steal their circle of privacy. Harry was glad to get rid of his, but he wished Draco could have kept the wings. Wrapped up with him, with even Riddle out of sight, Harry could pretend they were the only two people in the world and forget all his worries, for a little while.

He was reading in the common room that evening when a folded bit of parchment appeared between the pages. He let his blue eye circle the room, but there was no indication it came from anyone there. He unfolded it.

 _Shrieking Shack, right now, or I kill AD. V won't be happy if he dies at someone else's hands._

It was unsigned, but it wasn't hard to figure out who it was from.

" _But why is your doppelganger suddenly threatening Dumbledore,"_ Riddle wondered as Harry vanished the note. _"Whose side does this work for?"_

Harry was pretty sure the only side the Assistant worked for was his own.

* * *

Drugs and arrogance were what caught the Assistant out. It wasn't the first time and it probably wouldn't be the last. He'd learnt a lot in his life, and he'd unlearnt a lot, too, but he'd never lost the conceit that came of growing up believing he was the best the world had to offer. Lucius'—his Lucius'—constant subtle jabs about the impurity of his birth had never managed to dent the Assistance's self-importance. He had power, he survived Lord Voldemort, and he killed Albus Dumbledore. Uncountable years of life had only made that arrogance grow. There wasn't much that could touch it.

Still, he could admit it was a flaw. He knew it was weakness that sometimes caught him out, when he misjudged the people around him, when he underestimated the lengths some people were willing to go to for their beliefs. He hardly believed in anything, so it was easy to forget what conviction could do to a person.

And of course drugs did nothing to help his thinking. His only shame was that it was weed that caught him out. At least with an opiate or hard stimulant he could be excused for not thinking things through, but getting caught out by marijuana was just embarrassing.

There was a dealer in Hogsmeade, and the Assistant saw no reason to go any further afield. His blonde visage was somewhat well known by now, but not so well that simply darkening his hair didn't work as a disguise. Elisbeth lived in one of the last houses before the mountains, and she always invited him in for a smoke when he came to buy, which is where he got caught. The sad thing was he didn't even notice anything was wrong, not until he drifted off to sleep and woke up in the Shrieking Shack, a pair of magic-suppressing leather cuffs around his wrists, and Albus Dumbledore sat on the bed beside him, holding one of the Assistant's hands tightly in his own, with blood smeared between their palms.

Even before the Assistant registered the words Dumbledore spoke, he knew what was happening. He'd seen it happen enough before. He'd even pegged this particular Dumbledore as someone who'd try it—he'd expected him to go for James. The Assistant just hadn't expected Dumbledore to go for the _him_.

But Dumbledore clearly hadn't expected the Assistant to wake so soon from whatever he slipped in the weed, and he definitely didn't expect the violence that the Assistant would unleash when he woke.

But really, what the fuck else did he expect when he was trying to steal the Assistant from his Master?

The Assistant surged up from the bed, slammed a fist into the underside of Dumbledore's jaw, and followed the man down to the floor. He landed another punch on Dumbledore's cheek, felt the bone crack and saw Dumbledore's eyes roll, and then the old man went limp.

There was a shifting noise from the corner. The Assistant took Dumbledore's wand from him and stood, but didn't look over. He could see just enough from the corner of his eye to see that Yaxley was tied up but not gagged. He was charmed silent, evidently, but he could still mouth orders that would hit the Assistant hard enough for him to want to avoid them.

He focused instead on the cuffs around his wrists, but they wouldn't come undone. It was a safe bet they were Magic Locked.

"Dobby!"

The elf appeared with a crack, dressed in a footed onesie with unicorns printed on it. The Assistant thrust his hands out. "Can you get these off?"

Dobby examined them and his ears drooped. "Dobby is sorry, Mister Assistant," he said, sounding like he might cry. "Dobby cannots get them off."

The Assistant sighed, but quickly moved on to plan B. He pointed at Dumbledore, who was beginning to stir. "Tie him up, get Preston back to my cave, and then bring me quill and ink and something to write on."

Dobby obeyed immediately, and five minutes later the Assistant was left with a tied up Dumbledore while Dobby delivered a hastily scrawled message to Harry.

"I underestimated you," Dumbledore said, after the requisite attempts to struggle free of the rope that bound him to the bottom of the bed post.

"Makes us even," the Assistant replied. He sat on the floor opposite, Dumbledore's wand held in his lap, spinning it between his fingers.

"Do you intend to give that back?"

"Wouldn't do you much good if I did, would it? You'd have to fight for it for it to work well enough for you, and you won't win against me. I wouldn't underestimate you again, not even if I was willing to give you the chance of a fight."

"I was only doing what I thought was best for the war," Dumbledore said. The Assistant said nothing. "I had to act in the best interests of everyone. I won't apologise."

"Wouldn't expect you to. I don't begrudge you for doing what you think needed doing, Albus, but you tried to take me from my Master. I can't forgive that."

"So what now? Do you intend to kill me?"

The Assistant laughed. "You think I would?"

Dumbledore didn't look amused. "I honestly don't know."

"I won't kill you, Albus," he said, still smiling. "No point. You're dead in two months anyway."

Dobby reappeared. Dumbledore didn't manage to hide his surprise at the elf's dress, nor the fact Dobby saluted the Assistant—just two fingers, the same as the Assistant's usual tap to the head, except with considerably more military vigour.

"Message delivered, Mister Assistant sir!"

"Thanks. Stick around for a bit, will you?"

"Yes, Mister Assistant sir!"

"At ease, soldier," the Assistant murmured, and Dobby cocked his head, confused.

"Until who gets here?" Dumbledore asked.

"Only person that can get these cuffs off me."

"I'm the only person that can do that."

The Assistant glowered at him. Dumbledore didn't try to insult him by pushing the matter, nor by asking again who 'he' was. Instead he said, "How long has Harry known who you are?"

"Long enough. Not that it's any business of yours."

Dumbledore took that for the warning it was. "Might I ask why your elf is wearing pyjamas?"

"Tell him, Dobbs."

Dobby lowered his salute, threw out his chest, and lifted his chin. "Dobby is a free elf."

"Congratulations," Dumbledore said with a smile, "and may I say, I think your pyjamas are delightful."

Dobby beamed.

The two of them talked clothes for nearly ten minutes, the Assistant content to just listen, until there was a cracking from downstairs, like someone breaking planks. The Assistant stood and took hold of Dobby's hand.

"If they make any move to attack, get me out."

"Yes, sir."

The cracking was followed by a pause, then the creak of footsteps on the stairs, and then the door swung open and Harry stepped inside. His blue eye was fixed on Dumbledore even as his green focused on the Assistant, and he stood tense and wary, apparently ready to flee in a moment. His voice, when he spoke, was full of suspicion, but then the Assistant's note had been vaguely threatening.

"What's going on? Your note didn't explain much."

The Assistant held up his free hand. "Albus here has been getting up to his old tricks. I was hoping you'd help me out."

Harry's blue eye moved slightly as he looked over Dumbledore. "How did you tie him up and get that note to me if you can't do magic?"

"My house elf."

Harry's green eye flicked to Dobby, eying him with the kind of look a house elf in clothes always got, then returned to the Assistant. "What happened to your hand?"

The Assistant closed his fist on the cut on his right palm. "A scrape when I punched out Albus."

"You _punched_ him?"

"Twice," Dumbledore said, unabashed. "Somewhat justified, I will admit. I was attempting to take control of his Animancupium Bond."

The Assistant shot him a dark look. Harry looked surprised, both eyes darting between them before fixing on Dumbledore. "Why?"

"Do you not think it would be better if he was under my command than that of a Death Eater?"

Harry's gaze flickered briefly to a spot on the other side of the room and he didn't immediately answer Dumbledore. The Assistant watched him carefully. This was the riskiest part for him. Harry might decide Dumbledore was in the right, or it might occur to him to take the Assistant's Bond for himself. If he did, the Assistant was fucked. He would fight, of course, and he had Dobby's help, but without the element of surprise and against Harry's magic there was a good chance he'd lose.

Fortunately for him, Harry shook his head and looked at Dumbledore again. "I don't think you should have it."

It was impossible to tell just from looking whether Dumbledore's sad expression was genuine, but the Assistant would wager not.

"You still don't trust me?" Dumbledore asked quietly.

"No."

"I could use him to put a stop to this war," Dumbledore said. "The Assistant is the only person with power equal to yours, but he refuses to help. With his aid, we could destroy the last of the Horcruxes and kill Voldemort before exam week. He could do so without risking your health, and without raising Voldemort's suspicions and thus putting your friends, and Sirius and James, at risk from the Word of Death Curse."

"The prophecy says I have to kill him."

"Prophecies are not set in stone, Harry. Quite often they're simply self-fulfilling. There is nothing that says it absolutely has to be you who kills Lord Voldemort. I'd have thought you would appreciate that."

"Maybe I would," Harry said quietly, "but you can't force people to do things for you. You can't enslave them."

"He's already enslaved."

"But he's got his Master locked away somewhere safe where he can't give him orders."

"It's as free as I can get," the Assistant agreed. "You've no right taking that from me, Albus. So you'll get him to take them off for me?" he asked Harry.

"You intend to put me under the Imperius Curse?" Dumbledore said in tones carefully calculated to induce guilt.

Harry's brow furrowed slightly. "No. I'll just Wish you to take the cuffs off."

"Essentially the same thing."

"You tried to enslave him, I won't feel guilty for making you take those cuffs off him."

The ropes fell away and Dumbledore stood up. The Assistant held out Dumbledore's wand, tensing when Dumbledore took it, completely at their mercy. If Harry was lying, or he changed his mind, then now would be the time of attack.

He held out his free hand to Dumbledore, and only when he touched his wand to it and that cuff fell away did he let go of Dobby's hand to hold out his other. Once the second cuff was gone, the Assistant's relief rushed over him as fast as his glamour. Having his magic suppressed was always the worst. He'd been under the Animancupium for so long that the powerlessness of it generally didn't bother him anymore, but it was a rarity that someone caught him out like this. At least when Voldemort did it, torture provided ample distraction from the fear of powerlessness.

"Much appreciated, Harry. Consider me in your debt."

Harry nodded, looking thoughtful.

"Dobbs, get back to my cave, please. Stay there until I return."

Dobby saluted and vanished with a crack.

"And me?" Dumbledore said. "I assume I am in your disfavour. Can I expect retribution?"

The Assistant smiled at him, pointed at his wand. "You've still got your old one, haven't you?"

"Old one?" Dumbledore repeated innocently.

"Don't play with me, Albus," the Assistant warned with a dark look. Dumbledore took the hint.

"Yes, I still have it. Why?"

The Assistant flicked his fingers and Dumbledore's wand vanished. The old man glanced down in surprise at his empty hands, then up again. The Assistant lifted his hand and waggled his fingers in a wave.

"You're free to go, Albus. Have a nice walk back to your office."

Dumbledore looked from him to Harry, saw there was no aid coming from that corner, and accepted the command with a gracious smile.

"A fair punishment, I suppose. Better than I could have hoped for." He turned to Harry. "Shall we?"

"Actually, Albus, I want a word with him. You go on ahead."

Dumbledore smile vanished. For a moment, he looked as if he might object, but he clearly thought better of it. A sensible decision. With obvious reluctance, he turned away, pausing in the doorway to look back at Harry.

"I expect you back in Slytherin by curfew, Mr Evans."

Harry nodded, but said nothing, and Dumbledore left. The door swung shut behind him. Harry's blue eye remained fixed on it, while his green focused on the Assistant, who smiled and clicked his fingers. There was a small crack beyond the door, a yelp, the shuffle of movement, and the sound of cloth sliding against a smooth surface.

"That was quite uncalled for," Dumbledore then called from the bottom of the stairs.

"Goodbye, Albus!" the Assistant called back, and heard footsteps moving away.

Harry was grinning as both of his eyes settled on the Assistant, confirming that Dumbledore was out of both sight and hearing range. "I probably shouldn't laugh about knocking an old man down the stairs. He could have been hurt."

"I was careful about it, and he deserves what he gets."

"No argument here. So what did you want to talk about?"

"Seeing as I now owe you a favour, I figured I'd let you know I'm leaving."

Harry frowned. "Leaving?"

"Hogsmeade. I'm out of the war entirely now—no more spying, nothing. I won't get involved with anything that's going on from here out. Not unless you want it to call in your favour."

Harry's tongue darted out to nervously wet his lip. "You're not interfering at all?"

"No. I'm done. I plan to spend the next year getting very high until my loop resets."

Harry bit his lip, glanced across the room. "Do you know about the Dark Lord's plan? For end of exams?"

"Friday the thirteenth? Not exactly. I figured he's planning something, but I've been limited in my spying these last few months."

Harry grimaced. "Sorry. He made me keep you out of the hospital."

The Assistant waved a dismissive hand. "Don't worry about it. You did as you were told. Besides, I couldn't get much when he's been out of the country for six weeks anyway."

"Do you know why he left? Is he coming back?"

"Oh yeah, there's no way he'll leave for good, and no, I don't know where he's gone or what he's doing. So, you want to call in that favour, or hold it for later?"

Harry glanced across the room again, then said, "I'll hold it."

The Assistant nodded. "I'm sure you can find me when the time comes. I'll probably be in London somewhere. Good luck with the war."

They didn't have the kind of relationship that required any more heartfelt goodbye so he headed for the door with nothing else said, but just as he exited, Harry called to him.

"Can I defeat him? The Dark Lord, I mean."

The Assistant had stopped to look over his shoulder, but at that he turned properly. "You can," he said slowly, "but I don't know if you will. It really all depends."

"On what?"

The Assistant considered it, debated whether to keep his silence or not, but decided he owed the kid this much at least. He closed his eyes, twisted his magic, and opened them again to a room bathed in vibrant colours. His gaze drew immediately to the humanoid swirl of pine green and mauveine purple. It stood a few feet from Harry and a link ran from its chest area to Harry's forehead, not unlike the chain of yellow running out of the Assistant's own chest and into the south wall.

The Assistant lifted a hand and pointed at the figure of magic.

"On that."

* * *

Harry had no trouble leaving Slytherin as it wasn't yet curfew. Draco had prefect patrols that evening and he was the only person who would question Harry's movements, so he returned his book to his dorm and left the common room. In an empty corridor he turned invisible and once he was out the front doors of the school he took to the sky.

Sirius had told him about the tunnel beneath the Whomping Willow, but Harry didn't want the stillness of the tree drawing attention to the Aurors who'd be starting their patrols soon. It was easier to go over the wall, fly to the Shrieking Shack, and break through one of the boarded up windows.

The Assistant and Dumbledore were on the upper floor, in a bedroom. Dumbledore was on the floor at the foot of the bed, his wrists bound behind him and a couple of impressive bruises coming up on his face. The Assistant sat opposite, leaning against a wall, without any glamour hiding his true features. He had no weapons and he wore familiar cuffs around his wrists. A house elf was beside him, dressed in unicorn-printed pyjamas, which Harry was certain wasn't normal for a house elf, but it was hardly important.

Harry took all that in before entering the room, spying through the wall and floor. It didn't explain much.

He entered the room, found out what was going on. When Dumbledore said he'd tried to take the Assistant's Animancupium Bond, Riddle suggested they do the same.

" _It could be beneficial to have him under our command,"_ he said, but he didn't seem especially interested and he made no objection when Harry shook his head.

He didn't appreciate Dumbledore's attempt to make him feel guilty about controlling him, not when Dumbledore had been trying to control someone else in far worse ways.

But all of it got him thinking—the remark about the prophecy, the thought of having a slave (or a servant), the Assistant's claim of owing him a favour, the discussion of Voldemort's recent absence. It got him thinking about Voldemort's plan to infiltrate Hogwarts, something more and more on his mind as the date approached. While the rest of the students were concerned with their approaching exams, Harry was worrying about an assault on the school.

It's what made him ask what the Assistant thought of his chances against Voldemort. The attack on Hogwarts was probably the time to do it—if Harry could find a way to avoid the Word of Death Curse. Nagini was the biggest problem; if she really was a Horcrux, he had to destroy her first, and he couldn't do that without Voldemort noticing. Even if he went to the house now, while Voldemort was gone, and did it like he had with the locket—getting the soul piece out without killing Nagini herself—Voldemort would probably notice.

Then the Assistant turned on his magic vision and pointed at Riddle, and Harry forgot all about attacks on Voldemort.

"You can see him?" he gasped. Riddle was tenser than Harry had ever seen, staring at the Assistant, hands clenching down by his sides.

The Assistant dropped his hand. "Him… looks like Voldemort, I'm guessing."

"Tom Riddle," Harry confirmed. "When he was a teenager. But you can see him, can't you?"

"Not exactly. I see magic. Your magic is manifesting in a humanoid figure."

Riddle relaxed slightly. Harry frowned. "It's my magic? But I thought—"

In a flash, Riddle was across the room, hand over Harry's mouth. A moment later he was wrenched away. Harry saw the Assistant waving his hand and approaching, and he watched wide-eyed as Riddle was forced to his knees. The Assistant put his hand through Riddle's chest and gestured at Harry.

"Come here."

Harry went over. The Assistant pressed his other hand on Harry's forehead. Riddle twitched and gasped, grabbed at the Assistant's arm, but although he appeared able to grab it, he couldn't do more than that.

"What are you doing?" Harry asked.

The Assistant didn't answer. For nearly a full minute, he just stood there, only his hands tensing slightly in Riddle's chest and on Harry's head. Harry thought he could feel something happening, but he might have been imagining it. He wasn't imagining the tattoos that flickered into sight on his hands, vanishing from Riddle's.

Eventually the Assistant dropped his hands and stepped back. Riddle staggered to his feet, face furious, but when he lashed out at the Assistant his hand passed right through him. The Assistant made a motion like flicking away a ball of paper and Riddle was thrown across the room.

The Assistant closed his eyes and reopened them looking normal. He closed them again, grimacing slightly, and pressed a hand to his head.

"He shouldn't bother you any more," he said to Harry. "I've limited his connection to your magic. Nice ink."

Harry inspected his hands. They were exactly as they had been on Riddle's. Now that he knew Riddle was feeding on his magic, he could guess that Riddle had been using it to hide them from Harry's hands. Without him doing that, they were clear to see and it was up to Harry to Wish them hidden, although that didn't make them reappear on Riddle's hands now.

He looked back to the Assistant. "Can you make him disappear entirely?"

"No, I can't. But I'd suggest you don't try dealing with anymore Horcruxes."

Harry looked from him to Riddle and back again. "I'm right then. I'm possessed, aren't I?

The Assistant dropped his hand and opened his eyes. "Yes."

"Is it from the diary?" Harry asked. "I didn't start hearing a voice then, but it's the only time that makes sense to me."

The Assistant considered him. "Tell me about that. I wasn't around for the diary. You wrote in it?"

Harry nodded and explained what happened his first year. The Assistant listened without interrupting and only afterwards said, "Yeah, you probably absorbed the soul piece right before Severus destroyed the diary itself."

"And the locket? You saw that, didn't you? I didn't destroy it, I just absorbed it."

The Assistant nodded, and looked at Harry like he was trying to decide whether or not to give him some bad news.

"There's more, isn't there?"

The Assistant moved over to sit on the bed. It creaked threateningly and wobbled, but held up under him. "You thought about why the diary piece was able to enter you?"

Harry frowned, glancing at Riddle, who stood leaning against one wall and sulking. "I wrote in it. I put myself into the diary, so it was able to come into me."

The Assistant nodded. "But what if I told you that if it had been Ginny Weasley down in the Chamber of Secrets, this wouldn't have happened."

Harry stiffened. "What do you mean?"

"I mean the soul piece wouldn't have been able to possess her without the diary. It could have drained the life from her and become corporeal, giving Riddle a new body of his own, but it couldn't have left the diary to take up residence in her."

"Why not?"

The Assistant said nothing, just flicked his eyes up to the lightning bolt scar on Harry's forehead. Harry reached up to run his fingers over it. A scar from Voldemort. A scar that gave him some of Voldemort's powers, that let him see into Voldemort's mind, that let him feel what Voldemort felt. He remembered what Dumbledore had said: _'Voldemort was still at least one Horcrux short of his goal of six when he entered your parents' house … I am sure that he was intending to make his final Horcrux with your death.'_

He'd said that Voldemort failed, but maybe he hadn't. If he'd done the preparations necessary to remove the split piece of his soul, then it could have latched itself to Harry instead of a vessel.

He dropped his hand, looked the Assistant in the eye with both his own. "I'm a Horcrux. I always have been."

The Assistant nodded, once.

"I have to die before Voldemort can, even if I destroyed the others."

Another nod.

Harry took a deep breath, blew it out slowly, nodded. "Thanks for telling me."

"You alright?"

Harry smiled thinly, humourless. "I was gonna die anyway, right? Barely more than a year left before the hellhounds come for me." He took another breath, a shaky one this time, and couldn't keep his voice steady this time. "How bad do things get if he wins?"

The Assistant didn't sneer at him or make any unpleasant comments about cowardice or insult him for even thinking of letting Voldemort win. He just gave the question the consideration it was due.

"It gets bad. Muggleborns are banned from Hogwarts, denied jobs, left homeless. The kids are better off, they can usually go back to the Muggle world, but adults have their wands confiscated and a lot of them don't have the skills or qualifications to get decent work in the Muggle world. Muggle killing becomes more common place—attacks on them even end up legalised."

"What about half-bloods?"

"Depends on their attitudes," the Assistant said. "If they reject their Muggle heritage and agree with the pureblood agenda, then they do alright. More likely to be overlooked for promotions and the like, but they're not tortured and killed."

"What if they don't reject their heritage?"

"Treated poorly, but still not tortured and killed. Watched carefully to make sure they're not hiding Muggleborns, giving aid to them, that sort of thing. The whole wizarding Britain becomes despotic, even when Voldemort establishes a council instead of installing himself as a totalitarian Minister."

"I can't let that happen," Harry said, but he knew it could sound more convincing. He couldn't help wondering why he should care about a world that he wouldn't be living in.

" _Are you forgetting about your own Horcrux?"_ Riddle said bitterly. _"Not that there's much living as a bodiless spirit. Still, for all you know, your Horcrux might keep me alive, so maybe you should destroy it just in case."_

Harry bit his lip again. It was a valid concern, but hardly one he could mention. He didn't think the Assistant would care that he'd made a Horcrux, but he was one person who could find it and destroy it.

The Assistant shrugged. "Don't take this the wrong way, but it's really up to you. I mean, you'll be dead so it won't make much difference to you."

"It'll hurt my friends. Hermione's Muggleborn, Ginny's a blood traitor. Sirius'll be killed for fighting, which'll kill James, too. And if they find out about Dad…"

"So you kill Voldemort."

"But I have to destroy the other Horcruxes and you saw what happened when I did that."

"You don't have to do it like you did before. A little Fiendfyre will work."

"I planned to do that with the ring," Harry told him quietly. "But it went wrong."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. I had a seizure and I can't remember, but Dumbledore said I was trying to keep the ring away from someone."

The Assistant glanced about the room, gesturing vaguely. "From him?"

"I think so. I'd figured I was possessed by then."

"Well, he shouldn't be so much trouble now. You might manage it. Or you can just stick 'em all in one place and light 'em up. With your magic, you don't even need to touch them."

"What about Nagini?"

"What about her?"

"She is one, isn't she? Dumbledore thought so."

"Yeah."

"But if I destroy her, Voldemort will notice. He'll use the Word of Death Curse to kill my friends."

The Assistant said quietly, "Some would say the sacrifice of seven lives is permissible when it saves thousands. Eight if you include yourself."

"And if I don't?" Harry said, even quieter.

The Assistant shrugged. "Then you don't."

"You don't think I'm a terrible person?"

"Harry, I've sacrificed entire worlds for the sake of one person. I'm the last person to cast judgement on another."

"What happens if I absorb the rest of the Horcruxes?" Harry asked, and gestured to Riddle even though the Assistant couldn't see him any more. "Will it make him more powerful again? Will he take over me completely?"

"He might, or he might not. I've limited his connection to your magic, so that should help hold him off, plus your own will. That's what really matters—how hard you fight him. It's your body and your mind originally, so you've got a better grip on it. He can't take over if you refuse to let him."

That was encouraging, except that he hadn't had much luck doing so before now. Although, if he was honest, he hadn't tried that hard. He'd grown to like having that voice in his head.

The Assistant stood up and dropped a hand on Harry's shoulder, squeezing. "Look, I'm out of this world right around the same time you die. It makes no difference to me what happens to it. It's up to you whether you want to save it or save your friends."

"It's not fair!" It burst out of him with more vehemence than he intended. "I'm sixteen, it shouldn't be up to me to save the world!"

"Welcome to life, kid. It's never fair."

"You sound like Dad."

The Assistant grinned. "Thanks."

Harry huffed. The Assistant squeezed his shoulder again then took his hand away.

"I need to get going. Anything else you want to ask before I leave?"

Harry felt like he was being abandoned, but he knew it was stupid. He couldn't force the Assistant to do anything more, not without ending up like Dumbledore. But the Assistant was the only person in the world that knew what was going on, who could really have helped, who had any idea what it was like to be him. Harry wanted him to take charge, to say that Harry didn't have to be the one to deal with this war. He was sixteen years old, and for all that he'd looked after himself for most of those sixteen years and hated people trying to interfere with his life, right then he just wanted some adult to take all this responsibility away from him.

" _Then maybe you should have let the old man take this tosser's slave bond."_

Harry shook his head. "There's nothing else."

"Alright. If you need me, I'm sure you'll find a way—but only if you absolutely need to, alright?"

"Alright."

"Good. See you, Harry. Best of luck, whatever you decide to do."

* * *

Harry kept Saturday night's events to himself. He was back in Slytherin before curfew and before Draco returned from his patrols, so no one was any the wiser about his absence. At breakfast the next morning, Dumbledore's bruises were gone. Harry wondered if he'd healed them himself, gone to Madam Pomfrey with some excuse, or simply hid them under a glamour.

He got a message from Dumbledore that same morning, asking him to come and destroy another Horcrux that evening. Harry didn't reply to it, and didn't turn up that night. Once dinner was over, he talked Draco into going up to the Room of Requirement with him and stayed there until curfew. They did homework, had sex, agreed to ask Tyler about another threesome, and Harry was feeling pretty happy when they finally left, until they reached Slytherin and found James waiting outside the entrance. He straightened up when they approached.

"Sirius wants to see you," he said to Harry.

"It's curfew."

"I'm a teacher," James pointed out.

Harry sought some other excuse, found none, and sighed. "I'll see you later," he said to Draco, got a nod and a squeeze of the hand, and then followed James away. "What does he want?"

"He wants to know where you've been all night."

"With Draco. Can I go back now?"

James shook his head, glancing around to make sure Harry was still following as they reached the entrance hall. "He wants to see you himself."

"Why didn't he wait for me then?" Harry asked. He checked around for anyone within eavesdropping distance, but the hall was empty. "I thought he's not supposed to use you as a slave."

James had drawn his wand and he paused before the marble staircase to point it at the castle's front doors and send a Patronus message. "He's waiting at the gates."

Harry dropped his voice even though there was only the two of them. "He thinks I went to see Voldemort?"

James looked at him, putting his wand away. "Did you?"

"No!"

"It's a valid concern," James said, tone vaguely apologetic, and gestured towards the marble staircase. "You're a Death Eater. He must call you sometimes."

"He hasn't in ages and can we not talk about it here in the open?"

James nodded and they continued the rest of the way up to the fourth floor in silence. Up in Sirius and James' room, they waited only five minutes before Sirius turned up.

As soon as he arrived he demanded of Harry, "Where have you been all evening?"

"With Draco."

"Can you prove it?"

"Do I need to?" Harry snapped. He didn't appreciate Sirius' accusing tone.

"Yes," Sirius snapped back. "I want to know you weren't out with your Death Eater buddies all evening. You were supposed to see the headmaster."

"They're not my buddies!" A window smashed, making all three of them jump. It really surprised Harry; panic attacks not withstanding, he'd hardly destroyed anything in anger this year. There had only been the incident on the Hogwarts Express on the first of September, and the attack on Theo Nott in the library.

Sirius looked away from the shards of empty frame. "You're a Death Eater," he said, without accusation this time but still unforgiving.

"I didn't have a choice, you know that."

"Maybe not, but you are one, and I want to know where you were this evening."

"I told you, I was with Draco. Ask him if you don't believe me."

Sirius' mouth tightened. "He would lie for you. He knows what you are, too, after all."

He stared at Harry, daring him to counter that. Harry didn't, just glowered at him.

"So what am I supposed to do? We were alone, in the Room of Requirement, all evening."

"Doing what?"

Harry flushed. "Homework."

Sirius opened his mouth to ask more, but James stepped up and tugged on his sleeve. "Sirius, stop. I believe him."

"At least someone does," Harry grumbled. "Now do you want to tell me what it is you think I've done?"

Sirius stared at him for a moment, then sighed, tugged away from James, and dropped onto the sofa. James sat beside him, knees touching.

"Two people were kidnapped from Hogsmeade this evening."

"Who?"

"The women that run the tattoo shop."

"Why are you telling me? I don't know them."

But there was a chill in him at the news. He remembered the inked lady who'd refused to tattoo him back in October. He wondered if it was her or the second woman who'd done the tattoos currently hidden on his hands.

" _It was her,"_ Riddle said. _"She was very nice about it."_

"Did you do it?" Sirius asked.

Fury burnt through Harry, hot and sudden, and making the pot of floo powder on the mantelpiece explode.

"So that's it. Someone goes missing and it must be my fault, because obviously I'm the only Death Eater he ever calls on to do anything."

"Does that mean you didn't do it?"

"Does it matter? Someone did it, and we Death Eaters are all the same, right? What one does, we all do."

Sirius straightened up, his expression hardening. "You've done something for him during the past nine months, and it's not handing out care packages for the homeless."

"And you said you didn't want to know what I've done for him, but all of a sudden you're demanding to know where I've been and accusing me of kidnapping people."

Sirius clenched his teeth, glancing away.

"Do you really want to know about the things I've done, or will do?" Harry asked, voice quiet but set.

Sirius didn't look him in the eye. "I don't want to think badly of you."

"So no."

"Harry, don't be unfair," James said.

" _Me?_ You think _I'm_ being unfair?"

"He loves you. It's not easy when the person you love is forced to do bad things."

"Then let me make it easy for you—write me off. You don't want to think about me doing bad things because it'll make you stop loving me. But I have done bad things, and I can't undo them and I can't pretend I haven't done them. So just forget about me. I'm not worth the hassle," he said, and turned and left without giving them chance to respond.

" _I don't think he's a big loss,"_ Riddle remarked, strolling alongside Harry as they left the room and headed down the corridor.

"Shut up."

" _I don't think so. I've been collared, talking is all I have left. Besides, you know I'm right. Sirius has spent your whole relationship trying to keep you under his control or get you to be someone else. Remember the tantrum he threw when you wouldn't become an Animagus? The sulking fit when you told him you wanted time alone that first summer you moved in? He's judgmental and willing to believe the worst in you. He can't accept you as you are; even your daddy can accept you despite your flaws. Do you think Sirius would support you the way your daddy does if he'd been in that room with you while you were raped and tortured?"_

Harry said nothing. Riddle skipped forwards, turned, and started walking backwards in front of him. _"You can admit it, you know. There's no shame. You just threw him over. Accept it. You'll be a lot happier not having to worry about your ridiculous godfather."_

"He took me in," Harry muttered, slowing his pace, blue eye spinning about to check the halls were clear. It was past curfew, so only the teachers would be about. He made himself invisible, just to be on the safe side. "He gave me a home."

" _Oh sure, eventually. He didn't care so much when you were a baby and actually needed a home. He was more interested in killing a rat."_

"He said he loved me," Harry objected. "He was the first person who ever said that."

Riddle laughed bitterly. _"You really believe that? You spent a single summer with him before he said that, how could he learn to love you in that time? I've spent longer with you than that."_

Harry eyed him. "You're not going to claim to love me, are you?"

" _Don't be stupid, that would be like saying I loved myself, and don't change the subject: you're better off without Sirius. You don't need his judgement and he doesn't love you—the evidence is everywhere you look. He didn't love you when he ran after Peter Pettigrew, he didn't love you when he took you in and tried to make you James Potter Junior, and he certainly didn't love you when he found out who your real daddy was."_

"He said he didn't care about my parentage," Harry pointed out, but there was no conviction in his voice and he knew it.

" _Sure, he said that while you were angry with Snape, while you hated him. But you heard James earlier this year—Sirius was happy you supposedly chose him over your daddy. Do you think Sirius would be pleased to hear that you never killed him? Do you think he would still claim to love you if he found out that you prefer to turn to your daddy for comfort and support?"_

Riddle stopped, forcing Harry to stop as well or walk through him. He reached out, grasping Harry's shoulders in his cold hands, his expression one of fierce sympathy.

" _Forget Sirius."_

"He's my godfather." It was a token remark, a last final point to make in an argument he didn't believe.

" _You're nearly seventeen years old, you've split your soul in two, you're planning to kill the darkest wizard this country has ever seen. You don't need a godfather standing over your shoulder, and if you did, he's a poor candidate for it. Face it, Harry, he's no good for you."_

"Why should I agree with you?" Harry asked. He wasn't arguing with Riddle's point anymore, he was just arguing with Riddle. He didn't want to agree with the apparition, no matter how much his words sounded like the truth. "You're a twisted parasite just trying to make me fall out with people."

Riddle dropped his hands from Harry's shoulders, sympathetic expression turning hard. _"If anyone's the parasite around here, it's you."_

Harry stepped back. "What's that meant to mean?"

" _I realised something, now that all I can do is talk and think. The ring and the diary were the first two Horcruxes I made. You've absorbed both, plus the part of me that was already there, and whatever was in the locket."_

"So?"

" _So,"_ Riddle said with one of his smug smiles, _"assuming the soul is split precisely in half every time, I'm made up of over seventy-five percent of Voldemort's soul. You, meanwhile, have tucked half your soul into a little glass dragon in your daddy's grave."_ He tapped a cold finger against Harry's chest, smile widening. _"That means there's more of me in here than there is you."_

Harry opened his mouth, then shut it again. He walked around Riddle and headed back down to Slytherin, but the heavy cold pit that settled in his stomach refused to go away.


	49. Chapter 49

**Chapter 49**

When Voldemort returned to England after weeks abroad, he accepted the sycophantic greetings of his followers, took reports and dished out punishments as necessary, and cautiously read a note that had apparently been delivered that very night, tied around the neck of a snake. There were only three Parselmouths in all of Britain, and only one who'd do such a thing as this, so he knew even before unfolding it who the message was from.

 _Snake-face—_

 _I'm not sure when you'll get this given that you're out of the country (anywhere nice? You could use a tan), but consider this a courtesy note: I'm out of the fight. No more spying for Dumbledore, no more giving help to Harry, no more casting nasty little jinxes on your followers as they go about their everyday business. I'm officially retired from this war. I won't even interfere with whatever horrible plan you have in mind for 13th June._

 _I realise you probably won't believe me, but if it helps, know that Dumbledore turned on me. The bastard tried to take my Animancupium Bond and I won't forgive that. As fond as I am of Harry, I'm also not an idiot. You've all but won this war (congratulations!) and I don't bother fighting battles that can't be won._

 _So I'm out. The only thing that's likely to change my mind is if you come looking for me, so I suggest you don't. It won't end well for you._

 _Enjoy yourself. Try not to completely destroy Britain when you become MoM._

 _\- The Assistant_

Voldemort crumpled the note in his fist, then burned it. If the Assistant thought he could be fooled by such a ridiculous ruse, he had severely underestimated him.

* * *

Sirius wasn't in Defence class the first day classes resumed and James held Harry back after the lesson to say Sirius wanted to speak to him at lunch. Harry told him to stuff it; he was in no mood to deal with Sirius.

"He wants to apologise."

"Then tell him to find me himself instead of sending you as a messenger boy."

James tidied the pile of essays on his desk, tapped the sides to straighten them out, and looked up with a vaguely apologetic expression. "Give him a chance, can't you? It's making him sick thinking of the things you might have done."

" _Only fair. You've probably done all the things he's imagining."_

Harry shot Riddle a dark look. James looked sideways, frowning. Harry quickly put his gaze forward.

"That's his problem, not mine," Harry said, and left.

But Riddle bothered him all through History of Magic, speaking over Binns' lecture. _"You know I'm right. You're a terrible person who's done terrible things. You've killed and tortured and kidnapped. You stuffed a man in a box and let him get eaten by rats. You made a pregnant girl have a miscarriage and then murdered her. You can't get mad at Sirius for thinking the worst of you when you've_ _ **done**_ _the worst."_

Harry glanced up briefly from his notes to frown at Riddle, who sat cross-legged on the desk in front of him. What happened to Riddle wanting him to be on the outs with Sirius?

Riddle shrugged. _"I don't care either way, but you can't act superior with this much blood on your hands."_

'Says the mass murderer,' Harry thought spitefully.

Riddle grinned, leant forwards, and said in a stage whisper, _"I'm not Voldemort, just a twisted bit of soul living with you. I've only killed one person. How many have you killed?"_

Fourteen, Harry thought immediately. He didn't know all their names—there were two people from the summer whose names he'd never known, and that one in September—but he remembered all their faces.

" _Fifteen,"_ Riddle corrected. _"You're forgetting your aunt."_

Harry's hand jerked, his quill blotting ink across his notes. He glared at Riddle. 'You killed her, not me.'

" _Sure about that?"_

'Yes! You just admitted it!'

A knock on the door interrupted whatever Riddle was about to say, and Professor Binns' lecture. The four of them—Harry, Binns, Logan Sparrow, and Katie Bell—all looked at the door as it swung open and Dumbledore stepped inside. He smiled around the room at them.

"Headmaster!" Binns greeted, surprised. It was the most emotion Harry had ever heard out of him.

"I apologise for the interruption," Dumbledore said with a gentle smile, "but I was hoping to talk to Mr Evans."

"Yes, of course," Binns said, and looked between Harry and Logan. He was probably the only person in school who didn't know who he was. Logan pointed at Harry. Harry reluctantly gathered up his things, stuffed them into his bag, and followed Dumbledore out of the classroom.

The walk up to Dumbledore's office was done in terse silence, at least between Harry and Dumbledore. Riddle kept making suggestions on what Dumbledore wanted. Harry doubted Dumbledore intended to scold him for wearing jeans under his school robes (they were supposed to only wear black trousers if they wore anything), but the idea that Sirius had told Dumbledore about Harry being a Death Eater was entirely too plausible.

Up in the office, Harry stood before Dumbledore's desk while the headmaster went around it and sat. The portraits slept in their frames. The window was open, letting a cool breeze in to ruffle Fawkes' feathers where he sat on his perch. Harry watched the bird instead of looking at Dumbledore.

"Take a seat, Harry."

He didn't move. "Is this going to take long, sir?"

"That depends on you."

"What is it?"

"Why didn't you come see me yesterday evening?"

"I had homework to do, professor."

"A perfectly reasonable excuse. You might have done me the courtesy of sending a message informing me you wouldn't be coming."

"Sorry, professor."

"Might we destroy one now?"

Harry looked at him. Dumbledore sat calmly, hands folded over his stomach, watching Harry through his half-moon glasses. His expression was polite and friendly, and utterly suspicious in its lack of suspicion. Or perhaps that was just Harry's paranoia.

" _Sirius could have told him about you,"_ Riddle whispered, as if Dumbledore could hear him, mouth close to Harry's ear and cold body pressed up behind him. _"Maybe he's waiting for you to refuse to destroy a Horcrux as proof that you're really on Voldemort's side."_ He paused, shifted to stand by Harry, peered suspiciously at him. _"Maybe you really are on Voldemort's side."_

"I'm not!"

Dumbledore sat up straighter in his chair and Harry snapped his teeth together, resisting the urge to throw Riddle a furious look.

"You're not what?"

Harry hurriedly tried to think of a plausible line, came up blank, and sighed irritably. "I wasn't talking to you."

Dumbledore's expression of mild curiosity didn't change. "To whom were you talking?"

Harry looked at him. Dumbledore looked politely back.

"Didn't Dad tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"I hear voices."

" _A voice,"_ Riddle corrected. _"I am just one person. You don't normally let people think otherwise."_

That may be, but every other time he had thought it was just a voice in his head. Now that he knew it was a possession, he'd rather not draw attention to it. Better to let Dumbledore think he was really crazy.

"I'm afraid Severus never mentioned that to me," Dumbledore said gently. "He always was rather tight-lipped when it came to discussing you. Might I ask how long you've been hearing these voices?"

"Since third year, after Barty Crouch put the Imperius Curse on me while pretending to be Professor Moody."

Dumbledore sat completely upright, back straight as a plank, hands grasping the edge of his desk, eyes flashing behind his glasses. "He put you under that?"

"He said you gave him permission," Harry said, acting nonchalant but watching carefully for Dumbledore's reaction. He only realised in that moment that, despite knowing who Moody had really been then, he still believed Dumbledore might have given his permission for this.

But the moment of shock, then rage, that flickered across Dumbledore's face was genuine, and closely followed by an intense sadness. Harry had to look away as actual tears came to Dumbledore's eyes.

"Harry, I would never give my permission for any person to cast an Unforgivable Curse on a student."

" _He's playing you,"_ Riddle said, but Harry believed it. There was a ring of honesty in his words.

He heard movement and glanced around to see Dumbledore leave his desk and come stand before Harry.

"Harry, I want to apologise for putting those magic suppressing cuffs on you years ago. I know I said it before, after removing them, but I feel it necessary to do so again. I hadn't realised how long term the effects would be, or how badly it would break your trust in me. I am deeply sorry."

Riddle snorted. _"Are you listening to this rubbish? He's sorry alright—sorry that he's lost your trust, lost any chance of controlling you when you were young enough to still be impressionable."_

Harry didn't doubt it. Dumbledore looked and sounded utterly honest, and Harry believed he really did feel bad for what he'd done, but only because of the damage it did to their relationship. Harry might have been more inclined to forgive him if he'd apologised for sending Harry back to the Dursleys as well, but it was clear that Dumbledore had nothing more to say.

The lunchtime bell rang. Harry shrugged his schoolbag up his shoulder, took a step back, and lied coolly, "Professor, the Horcruxes have been dealt with. The Assistant and I destroyed them Saturday night, all except Nagini. As soon as you figure out a way to destroy her without alerting Voldemort and giving him chance to use the Word of Death Curse, then I'll kill him. Excuse me, I would like to get to lunch now."

He turned away without waiting for an answer, hiding his grim smile at the utterly stunned look on Dumbledore's face.

" _It's times like this that I remember you're not so bad after all,"_ Riddle said happily as they headed down the hall.

"Gee, thanks," Harry muttered.

" _I mean it. Ever since I was amputated, it's forced me to think. Didn't we get along once?"_

Harry glared. He didn't like responding to Riddle in thought, but he was entirely too close to Dumbledore's office to speak aloud, and the corridor beyond the gargoyle was busy with people, students and teachers hurrying to get to lunch.

" _Oh, come on. So I've been a little terse with you over the years, but I'm a part of you. We have to live together. We can be friends."_

'You're a piece of the Dark Lord possessing me. That's not the makings of a friendship.'

" _I'm sorry."_

Harry snorted, earning a sidelong look from a passing third year as he moved into the corridor.

" _I mean it,"_ Riddle insisted. _"I'm sorry for how I acted to you before. You're my host, I should have treated you better. I'm not saying this just because I'm cut off, either, so you can stop thinking that. I apologised before. I've even been perfectly well behaved since the unfortunate incident with the ring Horcrux."_

Harry scowled, glaring at the stone floor as he walked so that he wouldn't glare at Riddle.

" _You think I can't change? That I can't feel remorse?"_ Riddle stalked along beside him, hands clasped behind his back, robes swishing beside Harry's feet. _"I might be a piece of the Dark Lord, but I've spent years living in your head. You think I haven't been influenced by you?"_

'You couldn't grow as a person when you were yourself,' Harry thought. 'You spent your whole life as a horrible little bully.'

" _I learnt from those around me. You think it was caring and friendly to grow up in that orphanage?"_

Harry shot him a dark look at that. 'You mean that place where you bullied the kids? I haven't forgotten what the woman in that memory said. You killed some kid's rabbit. I didn't grow up getting coddled, but I didn't go around murdering innocent animals.'

" _I can't deny I made some mistakes, but I can change. I'm not even the person that did that. Look—"_

They were on a moving staircase and Riddle took the chance to move in front of Harry. The first year two steps below shivered and looked around and Harry forced himself to smile. She eyed him suspiciously and looked forward again.

" _Harry, I'm a fractured piece that's been living in you since you were a babe. A large piece of me was influenced by the soul of Ginny Weasley and you, writing in that diary. Everything that I am has been building on you for as long as you've been maturing. I am not Lord Voldemort. I'm not even Tom Riddle. Give me a chance."_

The stairs stopped. Harry walked through Riddle to get down them, but instead of taking the next one down, he detoured into an empty corridor and found an empty niche, away from students and the ever watchful gaze of the portraits.

"You want to prove you're not a bad person?" he said quietly. "Then figure out a way for me to kill Nagini without Voldemort setting off the Word of Death Curse."

A smile spread across Riddle's face. _"Is that all?"_ he said. _"Just put him to sleep."_

* * *

Harry, Draco, and Ernie Macmillan were the only people in Potions that afternoon. The sixth years who'd turned seventeen already were taking their Apparition test, leaving just the three of them. Professor Slughorn told them to surprise him by making something amusing.

"That sounds good, sir," said Ernie sycophantically, rubbing his hands together.

"I wonder if he'd find home-made lube amusing," Draco whispered to Harry, who smacked his shoulder but tried not to laugh. Riddle's suggestion had cheered him up so much that Harry had sped through lunch and spent half an hour in a broom cupboard with Draco.

Harry decided to brew an Elixir to Induce Euphoria. Snape had heavily edited the recipe, but it wasn't until after the lesson, when Slughorn commented that Harry's potion brainwaves must be his parents' genes really shining, that Harry wondered about all those alterations. It suddenly struck him that maybe Snape had improved the recipe so much because he felt the need to use it.

Their fellow sixth years returned shortly before dinner. Most of their housemates passed the Apparition test, except for Crabbe and Daphne Greengrass. Crabbe showed his disappointment by eating twice as much at dinner—no mean feat—and Daphne by insulting a first year until she burst into tears. Across the Great Hall, Ron and Neville were looking miserable, and so were a couple of Hufflepuffs and a single Ravenclaw.

Harry struggled to focus on his homework that evening. With Riddle's suggestion on his mind, he kept thinking about Horcruxes and destroying Voldemort. It was an effort to write even a History essay about the first Persian Empire, but he forced himself to work, knowing from experience that not doing any—or enough—work on a Monday led to it building up ridiculously. He put up with as much as he could, but eventually, half an hour before curfew, he threw down his quill, rubbed his face, and said, "I'm going for a walk."

Draco looked up from his own homework with a frown. "Everything alright?"

"Yeah, I'm just tired of sitting and working."

"Want me to come?"

"No, you have to finish that essay. I'll see you later."

He tidied his things, bent to give Draco a kiss, and left.

He wandered through the corridors, going slowly and letting his thoughts just drift for the moment, wandering down whatever paths they went. When he reached the entrance hall, he stopped, debating whether to go up to the Room of Requirement or sneak out to the Lake District. He should probably remain in the castle, but he preferred to do his thinking by the lake. Especially thinking about things that he preferred not to associate with Hogwarts. He wanted to start making a plan to attack Voldemort and he preferred to think about it in a place that was his own.

"Harry."

" _The lake,"_ Riddle suggested. _"It'll get you away from him."_

Sirius' hand landed on Harry's shoulder. He shrugged it off and turned towards the marble staircase.

"Harry, can we talk, please?"

"You said everything you needed to say."

Sirius grabbed his arm, whirling him around. Harry wrenched himself free, glaring at him. Sirius glared right back.

"You're not being fair to me."

There were a few other people in the entrance hall and they were starting to stare at Harry and Sirius. Harry Wished for everyone to pay them no attention, and as the onlookers headed off, he looked at Sirius coolly. Riddle stood beside him, smirking, one hand in his pocket and the other resting on Harry's shoulder.

"I'm being just as fair to you as you're being to me. James was right, I didn't kidnap those women, but I've done other stuff for the Dark Lord, and if you knew what, you'd hate me, so let's just skip the pointless attempts at getting along."

He hated to agree with Riddle, but he was right. Harry didn't need a parental figure, and he really didn't need Sirius' brand of godfathering.

"What? Harry, you can't be serious. Look, let's—"

Harry Wished them completely invisible, making them unseen and undetectable to absolutely everyone and everything, and then wrenched his left sleeve up. He twisted his arm, baring the Dark Mark inked on it, and Sirius recoiled.

Harry smiled thinly, dropped his sleeve. "That's what I thought. Forget it, Sirius. You can't trust or like me while I'm a Death Eater and I can't have a godfather that doesn't like me. I don't even need a godfather. I'm nearly seventeen and I'm going to kill Voldemort before my next birthday."

Sirius snapped his gaze up from where it'd been fixed on Harry's arm. "What?"

"I've got a plan—" he _would_ have a plan "—one that hopefully won't end with you and everyone else dying."

A smile spread across Sirius' face and he took a step forwards, reaching for Harry. "Harry, that's great! What is it?"

Harry stepped back, and Sirius' smile faltered. A couple of Gryffindors walked by and Harry had to step out of their way. Sirius seemed to realise for the first time that they were in a public place and suddenly looked around in panic, clearly fearing for who might have seen Harry's Dark Mark.

"They can't see us," Harry said, but they moved to a niche where there was probably supposed to be a suit of armour, putting them out of the way. They might be invisible and undetectable, but they could still be walked into. "My plan is none of your concern. It's mine and I don't need your help. It also doesn't change what I've already done and it won't make up for the people I've hurt. It doesn't make me a better person that you can love."

"You say that like you think I don't love you right now."

"You love someone who's murdered an innocent person?"

"Have you?" Sirius asked quietly.

"If I say yes, what are you going to do?"

"Nothing. There's nothing I can do."

"Would you love me?"

Sirius hesitated.

"That's all the answer I need," Harry said. "Your love is conditional and I can never meet the criteria, Sirius. I can never be the godson you want—I never _have_ been the godson you want. Just admit that and make life easier for us both."

He expected anger or dejection or a weak plea for Harry to take that back, but Sirius' expression just became stubborn. "No. You're my godson. So we haven't got along well—that doesn't change the facts. I'm not going to give up on you just because things aren't perfect. We just have to work harder."

"Don't you get it?" Harry cried. "Things will never be perfect for us. Sirius, you were made godfather to the baby son of James Potter, but that's not me. I'm the orphan of Severus Snape and I don't need a godfather."

Sirius' stubborn look didn't change. "I'm the godfather of Lily Evans' son, too, and you _are_ him." He stepped forward and jabbed a finger against Harry's chest. "I don't care that you're Snape's kid. I don't care that you're a Death Eater. Yeah, I don't like thinking of what you might have done and yeah, I might flinch when I see that mark on your arm, but _you're still my godson_. That's all that matters to me."

He lifted his chin and dropped his hand. "It might not matter to you, but I don't care. That's what being godfather means. Your view of love got screwed up because you were raised by that piece of shit uncle of yours, and that's my fault, I know that. I should have been there when you were a kid. But I'm telling you now: being a godfather isn't something you just stop doing, no matter how bad the kid gets. And I don't believe you're that bad yet. Whatever you've done for Voldemort, you only did it to save our lives— _my_ life—but you've also been having those sessions with Dumbledore all year, and you just said you have a plan to kill Voldemort, so I know you're not completely dark.

"So forget whatever bullshit you've got in your head about us going our separate ways. You want your space, fine, I'll give you that, but I'm still your godfather, I'm still gonna look out for you, and that will never change. You're not getting rid of me that easily."

He grabbed Harry and pulled him in for a hug, ignoring the way Harry tensed in his grip and didn't return it. He patted Harry firmly on the back, then drew away.

"I'll see you around, kid," he said, clapped Harry on the shoulder, then turned and walked off. Harry could only watch him go, utterly baffled, and Wish him visible once again. He kept himself hidden, leaning against the wall.

" _I think it's a ploy,"_ Riddle said, leaning beside him. _"A trick to make you trust him so he can get information, or try and trap you. He and Dumbledore don't know about your tattoos; they're probably hoping to catch you out with those cuffs."_

"Shut up," Harry said.

Riddle shrugged and fell quiet, but they both knew it wasn't a surrender, because Riddle knew what Harry wouldn't say: that he didn't trust Sirius' supposedly unquestioned dedication to him. He didn't believe Sirius was in cahoots with Dumbledore to suppress his magic and control him, but he also didn't believe Sirius cared for him like he said.

He just had no idea what Sirius _did_ feel.

* * *

He was summoned that night. After the confrontation with Sirius, he'd lost any interest in thinking about plans and had returned to Slytherin, but a few hours later his mark burned just as he was dozing off. The rest of the dorm was asleep, except for Theo, but the curtains of his bed were pulled shut, only a sliver of light shining through the gap. Harry got out of bed, quietly pulled on some robes, and very carefully tucked all thoughts of betrayal and attacks on Voldemort behind his Occlumency shields before he left.

Antonin was in the meeting room when Harry arrived, the only other person beside Voldemort himself. As Harry bowed and was ordered to stand and remove his mask, Antonin stayed quietly stood to one side.

"It's time we discussed the plans for infiltrating Hogwarts," Voldemort said.

A heavy sensation settled in Harry's stomach, but he kept his voice steady and clear. "My lord?"

"Friday the thirteenth of June. I will arrive at the gates of Hogwarts with my followers, and you will grant us entrance. During the evening meal would be the most ideal time; the castle occupants will be corralled and easily subdued with minimal casualties… which I am sure you would appreciate."

"Yes, my lord," Harry said, but cautiously, and he knew Voldemort heard his tone because the red eyes narrowed. Harry hastened to explain. "I fear your progress would be hampered. Entering the Great Hall—won't it be too busy and crowded? People walk about and get in the way."

There was a twitch in Voldemort's face, like it was trying to express some emotion but didn't know how. "Has Hogwarts' discipline suffered so severely that even the mealtimes have no decorum? Are the students not called to sit and then dismissed when the headmaster has finished his own repast?"

"Uh, no."

"Of course, under Dumbledore's command the very idea of discipline must be entirely absent."

Harry didn't know what to say to that.

"In that case, I believe an ambush would be the most ideal method. What time do the Aurors begin the night patrols?"

"Nine o'clock," Harry said, trying to keep the unhappiness out of his voice. He shouldn't be surprised that Voldemort knew about the protections on Hogwarts.

"Final student curfew?"

"The same."

"Including the prefects and upper years?"

"Yes. All students have to be in their houses by nine o'clock. New rules."

"I assume teachers patrol after hours, however."

"Yes. I don't know how long for."

"Then the ideal time of infiltration is then, when the students are shut away and only the teachers and Aurors stand in our way. If they have any sense—though I doubt such a thing—then they will submit on my command. If they do not, the sight of you murdering Dumbledore will surely destroy all thoughts of fighting."

"What about the students?"

"They can be summoned afterwards. I'm not so cruel as to force children to see their headmaster murdered."

Harry decided not to mention that Voldemort had been willing to let them see it on his original plan. Instead he asked, "What are you summoning them for?"

Voldemort's red eyes bored into Harry's blue and green. "I am announcing my victory in the war. Once they're aware, their parents will be informed."

"… oh," Harry said.

"Fear not for your schoolmates," Voldemort said. "Children are the future of this country. None of them will be harmed. Even the unfortunate Mudbloods. They will be escorted off the grounds unharmed with a selected teacher to return them to their parents.

"To return to your part in this sojourn," Voldemort went on. "I assume, of course, that you'll be able to reach the school gates to admit us without being caught by a patrolling staff member. I expect you to be ready to admit us at precisely half past nine. You may deal with any Aurors in the way you feel fit; they must not impede our progress, but leaving some alive to witness my victory would be preferable. You will also ensure that the Assistant cannot enter the castle or grounds at all that night. I will not have that interfering idiot ruining my plans."

"Yes, my lord." Not that it was necessary when the Assistant was down in London getting high.

"Heed this, Harry: if the Assistant makes even a cameo appearance at Hogwarts whilst I am there, I will assume you have betrayed me, and your friends will die. Your own punishment will not be nearly so swift."

"Yes, my lord," Harry said again, this time with a faint quiver in his voice.

"I believe that's all the information you're required to know. Any questions?"

" _Yes. What are you REALLY planning? This plan's full of so many holes, the Swiss will turn it to cheese."_

"No, my lord," Harry said.

"Very well. Antonin," he called, then ordered Harry, "Hold out your hand."

Cautiously, wondering what was going on, Harry did. Antonin came to stand before him, and took Harry's hand in his own, turning it palm up. In the darkness of the room, it was only then, when he was right in front of him, that Harry noticed Antonin had a knife. Quicker than Harry could pull away, Antonin slashed the knife across Harry's palm. Harry wrenched his hand away, cradling it in his other hand.

"What the hell?" he demanded as Antonin took the knife to his own palm

Voldemort's wand came up, point aiming at Harry's head. "Give him your hand."

Suddenly very afraid, Harry held out his shaking hand. Antonin clasped it with his own, smearing blood unpleasantly between their palms.

"What's going on?" Harry asked, while Riddle muttered, _"I don't like this."_

"Be quiet," Voldemort ordered. "Begin, Antonin."

Antonin started talking, reciting some Latin. Harry mentally translated as he went, and just as he realised what was going on, two ribbons of light burst out of their joined hands. One was mingled purple and a green so dark it was almost black, the other was a pastel blue. They whipped out and the purple-green one began to wrap around Antonin's wrist while the blue did the same around Harry's. Harry tried to wrench his hand free, but Antonin's grip tightened and Voldemort's wand tip pressed against his temple.

And then searing pain burst down Harry's arm. He and Antonin both screamed and their hands burst apart as if they were the same poles on a magnet. Harry staggered back and cradled his palm to his chest. Antonin very nearly fell on his backside, hunching over and gasping as he clutched his hand.

"What happened?" Voldemort demanded, looking between them.

"I… I don't kn-know, my lord," Antonin said weakly.

"You tried to make me a slave," Harry said. "That was for the Animancupium, wasn't it?"

"You're well informed." Voldemort didn't sound pleased by it.

"I know my Latin. That ritual was about binding souls."

Voldemort's wand focused on Harry's face again. "Do you intend to argue with my right to do whatever I please with my followers, Harry?"

"I've done everything you ever asked. You already have my friends' lives." He couldn't quite keep all the bitterness from his voice.

"I would prefer to have absolutely no doubts as to your loyalty. Present your hand. Antonin, try again. Get it right this time."

Antonin straightened up, grimacing slightly. "My lord, might I summon the book?"

Voldemort gave an irritated gesture that Antonin nonetheless seemed to accept as an affirmative, because he waved his wand towards the door. As they waited for the book to arrive, Harry glanced at Riddle. He hadn't tried to interfere with the ritual, but Harry wondered if his presence had anything to do with why it hadn't worked. Having a piece of someone else's soul in his body would probably mess with any soul-based magic.

" _So would splitting your own soul,"_ Riddle noted. _"It would also explain why our dear dark lord isn't trying to enslave you himself."_

Something thumped against the door. With a few flicks of Antonin's wand, the doors opened just enough for a thin book to slip through and fly to him. He used his wand to make it stop in front of him and open, the pages flicking through until it reached the spot he wanted. He read over it, then held out his hand to Harry.

Harry glanced at Voldemort, but he still had his wand in hand and an unmoving expression. Silently Wishing for the ritual to fail again, Harry took Antonin's hand, grimacing at the feel of semi-congealed blood. Antonin glanced at the still open book again, then began speaking the ritual. Harry had to fight not to wrench his hand away.

But the same thing happened again. As soon as the ribbons of light appeared, pain shot through Harry's arm, and his hand and Antonin's burst apart. Antonin went down to his knees this time, and Harry bent over his arm, gasping. It meant he never saw Voldemort's wand aim at him, just heard the frustrated hiss and then, " _Crucio!_ "

* * *

" _Your memory's been messed with,"_ Riddle told Harry during his free period after breakfast the next morning.

Harry should have been finishing the rest of his homework from the night before, but he preferred to lie in bed and doze, not quite sleeping but not really awake either. Voldemort had tortured him for reasons he couldn't really remember and Harry hadn't slept well once he got back.

Draco, Blaise, and Theo were in Herbology, but Crabbe and Goyle were both in the dorm, working through a mega box of chocolate frogs and squabbling over who got the famous witches and wizards cards.

" _I don't know what you've forgotten, but you've forgotten something. I can sense a gap in your thoughts."_

Harry sighed. That was just what he needed, someone messing with his head.

" _Maybe our dear dark lord revealed some of his plan to double cross you."_

Harry let his blue eye focus through his closed eyelid to look at Riddle, sat cross-legged on the end of the bed.

" _You must have realised he plans to,"_ Riddle said with a roll of his eyes. _"The moment you've killed Dumbledore, he plans to turn on you. I don't know if he plans to kill you or something else, but as soon as he doesn't need you any more he'll turn on you."_

Harry couldn't argue with that. But what was he supposed to do about it?

" _The Cruciatus Curse is your weak spot. You can't fight when you're under that, and you seize afterwards. You're too vulnerable then. You need to make sure he can't curse you in the back with that."_

Sure, he just needed to block an Unforgivable.

" _All you need is a correctly worded Wish. It can't be that hard. I know you've figured out how to deal with our dear dark lord; this is the only thing left you have to worry about."_

He was right. Since Riddle's suggestion about putting Voldemort to sleep yesterday, a plan had been slowly piecing together in Harry's mind, and knowing Voldemort's intention brought it together. Voldemort's plan was weak and full of holes, and he probably had something much more in mind that he wasn't telling Harry, but Harry thought the basis of it—to get into Hogwarts—was true, and that was enough. Harry would get them into the school, but as soon as he did he would put Voldemort in a coma and the Death Eaters in chains, and then he would hand them all over to the Ministry for arrest.

Voldemort would be in a permanent coma, much like Snape had been while buried, but Harry wouldn't kill him. A part of him thought that he should—that he should destroy the Horcruxes and then kill himself and Voldemort in a single wish. That was the thing to do—put an end to Voldemort once and for all.

Except he didn't want to die, not even semi-permanently to become the wraith that his own Horcrux would make him. It wasn't like he had a servant to return him to a human body, he wasn't sure he could get a piece of bone from Snape without hurting him, and he didn't want the use of Voldemort's blood to restore him.

" _You can always use Bellatrix,"_ Riddle suggested.

That was all well and good, but Harry still wasn't ready to die. Surely even living the rest of life completely invisible and undetectable was better than being dead? That was his only other method of avoiding the hellhounds, to hope his brand of invisibility worked against them, too.

" _At least you'd have me for company."_

That was another thing. Stupid as it was, he found himself unwilling to part with Riddle. Even knowing he was a piece of Voldemort and not just some mad hallucination, Harry found himself shying away from the idea of having silence in his head. Even the visual hallucination didn't bother him as much as it used to.

Which was another reason not to deal with the Horcruxes and just let Voldemort spend the rest of eternity in a permanent coma. Every time Harry thought of Wishing the Horcruxes to some safe place and destroying them with Fiendfyre, he would dismiss the idea with no real reason why. He was certain it was Riddle's influence, although Riddle never actually vocalised an objection to the plan. Harry didn't feel the same reluctance over Wishing the Horcruxes to himself, but he was afraid that even being in the same room as them would somehow lead to him touching them and absorbing the soul pieces inside. He didn't want to do that; he might have a weird, twisted fondness for the apparition of Riddle that haunted him, but he didn't want to give it any more power.

So he would put Voldemort to sleep, live with the piece inside him, and a year from now try to avoid getting mauled to death.

" _Can't we kill at least one Death Eater when they infiltrate?"_ Riddle asked, drawing Harry's thoughts back to the plan for 13th June. He opened both his eyes to glare at Riddle, who shrugged unapologetically. _"Just Bellatrix. She does deserve it."_

Harry considered it, but then shook his head. He couldn't go killing people at Hogwarts, no matter how much they deserved it.

" _What about Dumbledore? Are you going to kill him?"_

Harry opened his mouth to make a sarcastic comment about how well that would be received, but a yell of "That one's mine, I've been looking for Sacharissa Tugwood for ages!" from Crabbe stopped him short. He glanced across the room to see Crabbe and Goyle fighting over a chocolate frog card.

He didn't care about killing Dumbledore. He probably wouldn't have regretted it, but he didn't care to do it when he didn't have to.

" _He deserves it almost as much as Bellatrix, but fine."_

Riddle shifted forwards and lay down beside Harry. The bed wasn't wide enough for them both when Harry was sprawled across it at an angle, but although Riddle was half off the bed, his legs lay in midair as if they had something solid under him. Harry scowled at him, but didn't move except to shiver at the chill that spread through his side.

" _Do you really think this will work?"_ Riddle asked, sounding uncertain for the first time Harry could recall.

"I've no idea," Harry admitted in a soft voice, and didn't worry about getting overheard because at that moment there was a tearing sound, and he looked over to see the card of Sacharissa Tugwood rip in two, leaving Crabbe and Goyle each holding half a piece. There was a moment of silence as they both stared at the torn card, and then Crabbe gave a furious cry and pounced on Goyle, knocking him over the side of the bed, sending cards flying, and crushing half a dozen frogs.

* * *

On 30th April, he spent all day trying and failing not to think about the fact that in exactly one year he was probably going to get attacked by hellhounds. That night, he snuck out the castle and went to see Snape, who was surrounded by books in his living room and halfway through a bottle of vodka. He'd made no headway with breaking the deal, but Harry wasn't pleased to discover Snape had tried to make a deal of his own on New Years, a fact Snape had skilfully neglected to divulge before and probably wouldn't have now if he weren't half drunk.

"Can't you just Wish it broken?" Snape asked, speech only slightly slurred, though Harry was sure he was rather more drunk than he sounded. He wondered if he should worry about Snape's drinking, but Snape was always perfectly sober on the nights Harry brought Draco for Occlumency lessons (which were progressing very well), and when Harry earlier tentatively asked how much Snape drank, Snape insisted it wasn't that much.

"I'm afraid to try," Harry admitted. "I'm afraid that breaking the deal will lose me my magic. I don't think I could live like that."

"Like the rest of us, you mean?" Snape drawled.

Harry flushed, uncertain why he felt guilty for it, but admitted, "Yeah, I guess. The thought of not having my power scares me. I got it to protect myself, and I know it hasn't always worked, but I'm pretty sure I'd be dead already if I didn't have it."

"Then we should be thankful you do," Snape said solemnly, and sighed, leaning back against the sofa. He groped for his vodka bottle, poured a shot, and knocked it back, then let his head fall back, eyes closing. For a minute, there was silence but for the fire crackling in the grate. Harry, curled in the armchair, looked around at the books scattered across the floor. He should probably go back to Hogwarts, but he felt reluctant to leave.

Snape broke the silence with a question, not bothering to lift his head or open his eyes. "You can kill at a distance, can't you?" he asked thoughtfully.

"Yes," Harry replied cautiously, wondering if Snape wanted him to kill someone and not sure how he felt about that. "Why?"

Instead of answering, Snape asked, "And you can kill multiple people at once."

"Yeah."

"So…" He lifted his head to look across the firelit room at Harry, his dark eyes slightly bloodshot but perfectly clear in their intense focus. "You can kill the hellhounds."

Harry stared at him. Riddle straightened up from where he leant against a bookcase.

"This time next year, you can Wish for all the hellhounds—every single one in existence—to die. If they don't exist, they can't kill you."

It was so painfully, obviously simple that Harry wondered how he'd never thought of it before. It seemed _too_ painfully obviously simple.

"What if it doesn't work?"

"Why shouldn't it?"

"Hellhounds might be immune to my magic. There are some things I can't do."

Snape dismissed that with a wave of his hand, splashing a few stray droplets from his shot glass onto the books. Harry quickly Wished them dry; vodka couldn't be good for paper.

"Crowley was scared of you. He was frightened of the power he gave you, and people are only frightened of things that are a threat to them. If you're a threat to demons, you're a threat to their pet dogs. You can kill them."

Harry thought on that while Snape poured himself another shot. When the glass was empty again, he asked quietly, "You really believe that'll work?"

Snape stared down at his glass, and answered just as softly, "I have to believe it."

* * *

There were six weeks until 13th June. For Harry, they passed surprisingly pleasantly. He spent some time thinking about the upcoming attack on Hogwarts, trying to plan for all possibilities, but he spent a lot of time with his friends, did his schoolwork, and enjoyed the improving weather as spring slowly turned to summer. He gave a few tutoring sessions on History and Ancient Runes to the increasingly panicked fifth years, studied for his own upcoming NEWTs in said same subjects, and in between times conspired with Neville to keep Hermione from driving herself into the ground with her own revision. She would be sitting the Arithmancy NEWT this year and was working herself into such a state that Harry wondered how she'd survive next year.

He watched Draco have sex with Tyler again. It was better this time, not worrying about if it would be weird. Harry was still feeling satisfied and happy the next morning at breakfast, which was rudely interrupted when Hermione came storming up to the Slytherin table as soon as she entered the Great Hall, grabbed Harry by the arm, and tugged him forcibly to his feet.

"Hey, what's going on?" Harry demanded, but had to get up and follow her or risk getting pulled over the bench.

"We need to talk. _You_ stay there," she added viciously to Draco, who'd started to rise and now looked startled at her tone. Hermione and Neville didn't tend to hang out with Draco even now, but they got along well enough, accepting that they shared a friend in Harry. Harry had no idea why Hermione would now be snapping at Draco.

"What's this about?" Harry asked as he followed Hermione out of the hall. She didn't answer, just tugged him down the hall, found an empty classroom, and pulled him inside. Once the door was shut behind them, she turned to him, but suddenly lost her energy. The anger at Draco was all gone, leaving her looking uncertain and worried, but not for herself. Harry was suddenly reminded of the trip on the Hogwarts express after the Christmas holiday of his second year, when she and Neville had reluctantly informed him about Sirius' supposed betrayal of James and Lily.

He was suddenly very afraid. "What's wrong?"

"Oh, Harry, I'm so sorry. I don't want to tell you, it's so awful, but I can't keep it a secret, I just _can't_."

"Keep what a secret?" he demanded. "What's wrong, what's going on?"

She looked at him miserably. "I saw Draco kissing Tyler."

Harry blinked. Riddle burst into howls of laughter.

Hermione had stepped back immediately after speaking, apparently afraid of an outburst of magic. When it didn't come, she cautiously stepped forward again.

"Are you… are you okay?"

He was trying hard not to think about the things _he'd_ seen Draco doing to Tyler. This wasn't the time or place.

"Uh, when did you see this?" he asked, and wished Riddle would shut up.

"Yesterday." She paused, eying him, then added, "It was outside the Room of Requirement. I… I saw them go in."

Harry flushed and look down, then staggered back as Hermione threw herself at him, hugging him tightly about the neck.

"Harry, I'm so sorry. I can't imagine how horrible this must be for you."

"Um," he said, "actually… I knew."

She pulled back. Harry stared past her ear at the wall.

"You knew? But you were laughing with Draco a minute ago! Surely you haven't forgiven him? He cheated on you—with one of your friends!"

Harry's cheeks felt warm enough to fry eggs on. "That's not exactly what happened."

"What do you mean?"

He cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. "I was in the Room of Requirement yesterday."

"I don't understand."

"I, um… look, it was… it wasn't cheating, because I knew about it beforehand. I agreed to it. We all did. They knew I was there."

Hermione's brow furrowed. "You agreed to…" Her brow suddenly cleared and her eyebrows shot up. " _Oh_ ," she said.

"Yeah."

"Right." Hermione cleared her throat. "I… I should get to breakfast."

"Yeah," Harry said again, wondering if he'd ever be able to look her in the eye again, and then, when she'd left, he turned to Riddle. "You can bloody well shut up."

Riddle just laughed harder.


	50. Chapter 50

**Chapter 50**

13th June dawned clear and warm, with most students cheerful over the end of exams and the upcoming weekend, but for Harry the day began as it meant to end—badly.

He woke up with familiar leather cuffs about his wrists.

He Wished them gone before he even had chance to remember they were useless against him now, panic automatically bubbling up in his chest just at the sight of them. It eased when they vanished, and only as he sat rubbing his wrists did he wonder how the cuffs had got there.

" _As if there's any question,"_ Riddle muttered darkly, which was true enough.

He found an envelope on his bedside cabinet, his name written across the front in Dumbledore's flowing script. He seriously considered setting it on fire, but figured he should find out what the bastard was up to.

 _Dear Harry,_

 _I would like to begin this letter with an apology, however I know it will mean little to you. You once told me you would never forgive me for putting those cuffs on you once; I certainly don't expect you to do so when I've done it twice. I would, however, like to give you an explanation._

 _I am aware that, a year ago, you were not forced to withdraw from the war, but rather to join Voldemort's side. Rest assured, I do not hold this against you and no retribution or punishment will be given. You made the best decision you could at the time and you cannot be held accountable for whatever crimes you may have been forced to commit in the time since._

" _That sanctimonious bastard,"_ Riddle snarled, while Harry's hands shook with anger. _"How dare he think we need or want his absolution."_

 _Nor do I believe you have been misleading me this past year and passing on the information you learned during our lessons. I trust that, if it had not been for the risk to your loved ones, you would never have agreed to join Voldemort, and that you still seek to see him destroyed._

 _However, I felt it necessary to limit your power today. I know that Voldemort has some plan in mind, though I confess that I don't know the details. For your own safety, I have restricted your power so that you cannot be forced to do something you would rather not. Should Voldemort ask anything of you, you can honestly say that it is beyond your abilities with no risk of blame._

Riddle scoffed, and Harry laughed bitterly. That showed just what Dumbledore knew of Voldemort's thought processes.

 _I have of course taken other precautions, but I ask your forgiveness if I do not furnish you with the details._

 _The cuffs I put on you will remove themselves by midnight tonight. I have it in good faith that whatever plans Voldemort has will either fail or be complete by that time. I am hopeful that they will fail, but in either case you will be free of restrictions. I would not begrudge you your revenge when that time comes._

Harry paused at that sentence, read it again. Riddle vocalised his suspicion.

" _He knows he's going to die."_

 _While I will not apologise for placing these cuffs on you, I would like to apologise for something else: I am sorry that, as of writing this letter, I have yet to determine a safe method through which you can destroy Nagini. I fear that it may one day come to the most unfortunate decision: that a sacrifice must be made._

 _This is a decision that belongs to neither you nor myself, but to those who would pay the ultimate price: Sirius, James, Hermione, Neville, Ginny, Tyler, and Cid._

 _I will not burden you with the responsibility of expressing this possibility to them. That weight rests solely on my shoulders. All I can ask of you is your understanding, though not your forgiveness, that for all the pain such an eventuality will cause you, it may be unavoidable._

 _However, I stress that this is only a possibility. It may still be that Bill Weasley will discover a way to break the Word of Death Curse, a task he has been tirelessly pursuing since last summer. There is still hope yet._

 _So I leave you with this explanation. I know it will earn me no forgiveness, but I hope it will at least allow you to understand my reasons._

 _Respectfully yours,_

 _Albus Dumbledore_

"What's that?"

Harry looked across to the next bed, where Draco was sitting up and rubbing his eyes, yawning. His hair stuck out at all angles until he ran a hand through it, after which it only stuck out at some angles. Around them, the rest of the dorm was waking with grumbles (Blaise), grunts (Crabbe), and a thump of hitting the floor (Goyle). Theo was already up and gone, which wasn't unusual; he was an early riser, no matter how late he went to bed.

Harry looked back down at the letter. He hadn't told Draco—or Snape—about the plans for that day. He didn't want them worrying. Draco might be peeved at him later, but Harry's instincts said it was safer for him not to know, just in case things went wrong.

"Nothing," he lied, and vanished the letter. "Come on, let's shower before all the hot water's gone."

Draco grunted, but got to his feet and fetched his wash things. Harry washed and dressed quietly, thoughts still with the cuffs and Dumbledore's letter. Before he left the dorm for breakfast, he Wished for the cuffs back, then Wished for no one except Dumbledore to pay attention to them. They were useless, but there was no need for Dumbledore to know that just yet.

" _And Sirius and James,"_ Riddle said as Harry left Slytherin, bag stuffed with his History notes and books covering topics he thought would be on the NEWT. His Ancient Runes exam had been on Monday (he thought it went well) and History was that afternoon, so he was spending the morning revising in the library. _"You know they're the ones who told him about that mark on your arm."_

So much for looking out for him, Harry thought bitterly, and adjusted the Wish.

* * *

The morning passed with the fast-slow duality that occurred when you were waiting for an event that you both feared and just wanted to get done. His confidence over the NEWT exam wasn't as high as it had been over the OWL, which covered mostly European history. The NEWT had more world history, and he wasn't as well versed in that. It didn't help that he kept getting distracted from his revision by angry thoughts at Dumbledore and Sirius, and fear over that evening's plans.

He intended to kill Dumbledore. He wasn't sure whether to make it look like an accident, make it appear as if someone else had done it, or just accept the deserved blame, but he was going to kill him. He would make sure Dumbledore knew it was him, even if he disguised it to everyone else; he wanted the bastard to know that his actions this morning had earned him Harry's absolute hatred.

He wasn't sure what to do about Sirius. He wasn't angry enough with him to kill him, especially as it would also kill James who Harry had no real anger towards, but he wanted Sirius to know that Harry held him in contempt, too. For now, all he'd been able to do was pointedly ignore looking at Sirius during breakfast (at which Dumbledore had been conspicuously absent, the coward) and feel smug about the concerned look Sirius got as Harry appeared unbothered by the restriction on his magic. For anything else, Harry was willing to see how things went and take any opportunity that presented itself.

He got a small chance at lunch. Dumbledore was absent then, too, but when Harry was halfway through picking at his sandwich, Sirius came up behind him.

"Harry—"

Harry stiffened in his seat as though surprised, although he'd seen Sirius coming, then said in his coldest voice possible, "Fuck off."

There were gasps from the students nearby. The fact that Sirius was his godfather didn't stop him being a teacher and no one spoke to a teacher like that.

"Harry, can I—"

Harry twisted and glared up at him. He didn't know it, but his expression would have made Voldemort think twice about speaking. It made Sirius back up hastily, hands raised in surrender.

"Alright," he said quietly. "We'll talk later."

Harry just snorted dismissively and turned away. Sirius slouched off. The sixth years sitting around Harry all stared, but it was Draco who asked, "What the hell was that about?"

"We had a fight."

"About what?"

"Tell you later."

Draco frowned unhappily, but he nodded. No one else seemed to dare ask any questions, but there were whispers up and down the table and Harry could only imagine what sort of rumours were being born.

The exam that afternoon went nicely—better than Harry'd hoped. There were no questions that completely stumped him, although he was sure there were some he could have been more detailed on, and his thoughts stayed nicely away from murder and infiltration (at least any that wasn't committed more than fifty years ago).

Draco had a free period last on Fridays, and Harry's exam was over by then, so they got several hours to spend to themselves. The spent some time in the Room of Requirement, but after that they went out to the grounds, both of them unwilling to stay shut inside on such a nice day. They flew for a bit, both nestled on Draco's broom, then joined a large group of students hanging out by the lake.

It was made up of a mix of years and houses, and discussion was centred on a post-exams party planned for that night, primarily for OWL and NEWT students. Harry was invited, but he was getting antsy about the night's plans by then and really didn't feel up to a boisterous party with lots of people, especially as he would have to make sure they all returned to their houses by curfew. He didn't want any students roaming the castle by the time Voldemort came; he couldn't risk anyone getting caught in the middle of things if it took a turn for the worse.

He spent the time between dinner and curfew with Hermione and Neville, outfitting a classroom into the living room he used to use and bringing out Hermione's old Monopoly board. He and Hermione were pretending to forget that she knew about his sexual antics with Draco and Tyler, and she hadn't told Neville, so things weren't awkward between them. Hermione was also a lot more relaxed now that her Arithmancy exam was out of the way; she did start to worry over the results, but Neville and Harry pelted her with multicoloured bubbles that painted her skin and clothes until, laughing, she begged for mercy.

It was quarter to nine when Logan Sparrow (who Hermione was not going out with despite their attendance at Slughorn's Christmas party; "it was just a fun date," she'd told Harry) turned up. He looked momentarily surprised at the state of the classroom they'd commandeered, and then said, "Professor Dumbledore wants to see you, Hermione, Longbottom. I'm supposed to escort you there."

Harry narrowed his eyes as Hermione and Neville exchanged surprised looks.

"What's this about?" Harry asked.

"I don't know," Logan said. "I was just asked to fetch them. You should get back to Slytherin, Evans. It's almost curfew. But fix this room first or you'll lose us points and the house cup is too close to risk that this late in the year."

Harry nodded stiffly and told Hermione he'd pack up the Monopoly game and get it back to her. Harry watched them go, the room around him returning to normal and the Monopoly board and pieces returning themselves to the box. He was tempted to follow, but he was remembering Dumbledore's letter and talk of sacrifice, and he didn't want to see his friends faces when they got asked if they were willing to die to defeat Voldemort.

Left by his friends, Harry conjured parchment, ink, and quill, and wrote a letter he really didn't want to. There was a strong chance he would be wanted for murder by midnight and he'd have to leave the school; he couldn't do that without leaving an explanation for Draco. But when he didn't know what would happen, he couldn't explain things clearly. In the end, all he could say was that whatever happened, Harry would be in contact with him.

He was wondering whether to write something for his other friends when his Dark Mark burned. It was a good excuse to write nothing; he couldn't explain anything in just a letter. Maybe, depending on what happened tonight, he would Wish their memories back to them of what really happened a year ago. They deserved that much.

Harry sent the letter for Draco to the Slytherin dorms and Wished the Monopoly box to Hermione's room, then set off.

" _Be careful,"_ Riddle murmured as Harry left the castle.

When he teleported to the hospital, it was completely and utterly abandoned.

"What the hell…" he murmured, blue eye scanning as far as it could, peering through walls into as many rooms as he could see. There was no sign of life anywhere, and he didn't have the growing ache in his head that always began when he was in Voldemort's presence.

" _The mark!"_ Riddle said. _"It's supposed to take you to him. You didn't follow it, you just teleported here."_

Harry tried to remember if he'd ever followed the mark when answering a summons. Had he even the first time, or had he just automatically come to the place where he'd been held prisoner?

" _Apparate,"_ Riddle suggested. _"The mark is still burning; focus on that and don't teleport—Apparate."_

Harry hoped he could. He closed his eyes, gave all his attention to the pain his arm, let it be all he thought about even as it made his arm twitch and he grit his teeth. He thought he could feel a connection between himself and Voldemort, and it was suddenly really easy to twist on the spot, vanish, and reappear somewhere else. He knew he'd Apparated because it felt different—the squeezing sensation of being thrust through something too small instead of the dissolving feeling of his normal teleportation—and because, as soon as he reappeared, there was a familiar pain beginning in his head.

He opened his eyes. He'd appeared before Voldemort, surrounded by a considerably larger number of people than Harry had seen before or was expecting Voldemort to bring to the infiltration. Were all these people really Death Eaters? They couldn't possibly be.

" _Never mind them,"_ Riddle said with an unusual quaver in his voice. _"Look…"_

Harry looked, tilting his head up and already knowing what he would see, knew it from the chill in his bones, not yet close enough to trigger a seizure or overwhelm him with bad memories, but enough to be distinguishable—Dementors.

"Harry," Voldemort's cold voice said warningly, and Harry gave a bow.

"My lord," he greeted politely, "I wasn't expecting your summons so early."

"You should always expect my summons," Voldemort said.

"Of course, my lord, forgive me."

Voldemort raised a hand, gesturing expansively to the entourage behind him. "The time of the attack is at hand."

His gesturing hand moved around to point over Harry's head. Harry turned and felt a chill run down his spine and twist about to settle like a heavy iceberg in his stomach. He knew this day would come, but it didn't make him dread it any less.

Behind him, less than half a mile away, was Hogwarts; they were on the path running to the castle from Hogsmeade train station.

"We march on Hogwarts!" Voldemort announced.

The group surged forward, Voldemort leading, Harry close behind with others that Harry assumed were Voldemort's most trusted. He recognised the masks of Lucius, Antonin, and Bellatrix among them.

As they moved, Harry made a quick Wish for everyone in Hogsmeade to return to their homes or stay inside the pubs. Hopefully that would at least minimalise any troubles with the residents. He didn't think Voldemort would go out of his way to attack the village when his focus was the castle, but he wasn't sure if some of the others might be sent to 'keep things under control', so to speak. Half of him hoped they would, just so there was less people attacking the castle itself.

He also made a carefully worded Wish for Voldemort to not the use the Cruciatus Curse on him. He couldn't make Voldemort forget it—that would be too obvious—but a decision not to use it would hopefully slip by without notice. It only left the question of how Voldemort would try to attack Harry instead, as he surely would.

" _We just have to make sure to get him first,"_ Riddle murmured. _"We planned for this. We can do it. Just be wary and pay attention."_

Despite the size of the group, they were quiet as they moved, no one speaking, most of their footsteps so muffled that Harry thought they must have used charms. As he'd thought, some of the group peeled off towards the village when they reached the fork in the road, while the rest of them turned towards the school.

Once they turned the last bend and the school gates were visible just 500 feet ahead, it became clear that their presence had been noticed. Voldemort didn't seem surprised—but then, the Dementors must have been the biggest giveaway—and gestured Harry forwards to walk beside him, ordering him to remove his mask. Harry slid it up reluctantly, letting it sit on his hair, a clear indication that he was no prisoner.

Some half dozen Aurors were collected before the gates. At the sight of Harry and Voldemort they faltered momentarily, but then stood their ground, wands raised. One of them had already conjured a shield, and another sent a Patronus towards the school, presumably as messenger.

Then, as the Aurors prepared to attack, the rest of the Death Eaters rounded the bend, and the Aurors' bravery faltered. Voldemort raised his own wand, but before he could get off a spell, Harry Wished for the Aurors to lose courage and flee. Four of them vanished with a crack of Apparition, but two of them crashed through the school gates and ran for the castle, wands waving behind them to make the gates slam into place and lock shut again. Jeers and laughter rose up from the crowd behind Harry, their confidence boosted at the Aurors' cowardice.

"Get us in, Harry," Voldemort said as they approached the gates.

Harry hesitated, but not for as long as he probably should have. He was letting Voldemort himself, and numerous Death Eaters, into Hogwarts, into the one place that was supposed to be safe. He—Harry—was breaching that place of security, where parents trusted their children to be safe from the ravages of war. Even with a plan in mind, there was something unforgivable about letting these people onto Hogwarts grounds.

But then, Hogwarts had never been safe for him, and he'd done a lot of unforgivable things in the past year.

He Wished, the gates swung open, and they walked in untouched by the Ministry and Dumbledore's best protective magic.

They were halfway up to the castle when the front doors swung open and the teachers poured out, with the two Aurors who'd not Apparated away. Dumbledore led them, coming straight down the stone steps from the castle with no sign of surprise or apprehension at seeing so many people invading the school. The rest of the staff spread out on either side of him, presenting a barrier between the school and Voldemort's forces, and several of them did looked stunned to see Harry at Voldemort's side.

Voldemort lifted a hand, and the people behind him stopped, some of them spilling sideways to create a line wider than that made by the teachers. Even with that, they still stood at least three deep—four or five in places—and it was like seeing an army facing a tiny group of hopeful rebels.

That was, Harry supposed, exactly the case.

Voldemort was the first person to speak, breaking the silence under the twilight sky, his bald white head almost glowing slightly under the gibbous moon. Twenty feet across from him, Dumbledore was equally well lit, the moon making some of the white strands in his beard glow silver, the rest of him backlit by the lights spilling out of the castle's front doors. On either side of the two leaders, everyone else was just dim shadows.

"Have you come to surrender?" Voldemort asked Dumbledore, pitching his voice so it carried to everyone.

"I will never surrender to you, Tom," Dumbledore replied calmly.

"Not even for the safety of your students?"

"Not for anything."

"I wonder what your students think of that." Voldemort put a hand on Harry's shoulder, and Harry couldn't suppress a shiver at the touch. "What say you, Harry?"

"I'm not sure my opinion counts for much," Harry said, his own voice not nearly as loud and carrying as Voldemort and Dumbledore's. He knew his answer wasn't what Voldemort wanted to hear—the hand on his shoulder dug nails into his skin, even through his robes—but it wasn't enough to earn a reprimand or suspicion. "My opinion on Dumbledore is biased."

"Harry, you don't need to stand by him," Dumbledore said. His tone didn't change, perhaps realising that treating Harry as anything other than an equal to himself and Voldemort would only make Harry hate him more.

Movement down the line of teachers drew Harry's attention and he glanced over to see James restraining Sirius, whose face was twisted with anger and worry.

Voldemort laughed. "Is that your great persuasion, Dumbledore?"

Dumbledore ignored him, gaze never leaving Harry. "You were forced into this, but you needn't. We understand your position—the other teachers and I, your godfather, even Bill."

He gestured as he spoke and at that name Harry's blue eye snapped away from watching the crowd behind him to focus on the only ginger-haired adult among the teachers. Bill Weasley stood between Professors Flitwick and Vector, and Harry knew, immediately, what it meant. He knew why Hermione and Neville had been called to the headmaster's office earlier.

But what if he was wrong? Maybe it wasn't good news. Maybe it was bad. Bill didn't exactly look satisfied with a job well done, but then who would in the face of Voldemort's army?

Dragging his gaze away from Bill, Harry sneered at Dumbledore. "You know full well I can't turn away from my lord, even if I wanted to." That caused murmurs among the teachers and Sirius called Harry's name, but Harry ignored it all. He was painfully aware of Voldemort's hand on his shoulder and he had to be careful about what he said.

"Harry, this war can be won without paying the ultimate price. I have made sure of it. You cannot trust that man to protect your friends. He will only tear this world apart."

The ultimate price… his friends' lives. Harry was right, he was sure now that's what Dumbledore was telling him. The Word of Death Curse was broken.

" _But you still want him dead."_

Harry lifted his chin. "Maybe he would, and maybe he won't, but I still wouldn't stand by you, no matter what you do for me now."

"Do you mean to say that you've truly given your loyalties to him?"

"Are you surprised?" Harry asked, anger seeping into his voice, stepping forwards, Voldemort's hand falling from his shoulder. "Did you really not see this coming?"

"Harry!" Sirius called again, breaking free of James. Harry snapped his gaze over, jerked his wand up, and Sirius tripped, crashing to the ground. Vines leapt out of the earth and wrapped around him, holding down his arms and legs and gagging his mouth. James immediately dropped down beside him and aimed his wand to the vines, so Harry tied him down too.

"I don't want to hear anything from you, Sirius. I told you before, I'm not the godson you want, and you're not the godfather _I_ want."

"This is your choice then?" Dumbledore said, his voice now hard and unforgiving. "You stand beside him?"

"My choice?" Harry repeated with a bitter laugh. "No, Dumbledore, it's not my choice. He forced me into it, but you forced me to stand against you just as well." He lifted his hands, letting his sleeves fall back to reveal the cuffs around his wrists. "Yesterday, I was willing to hold you in unforgivable contempt. Today, I want to kill you."

Harry had to give credit where it was due—Dumbledore disarmed him of his wand before Harry even had time to register that he was attacking. The wand flew across the space between them and Dumbledore picked it out of the air like a Seeker making an easy catch.

"I won't—" Dumbledore began, and then broke off as both Harry's wand and his own vanished from his hands. He took only a second to be startled, then he looked up and around, expression grave, eyes scanning the crowd. Harry held up the wands, and judging from the shocked look on Dumbledore's face, Harry could guess he'd been expecting the Assistant to be the one responsible for the attack.

" _Then he thought the Assistant broke Voldemort into the school? Or did he think Voldemort broke the perimeter under his own strength?"_

Harry didn't know, or care.

"Did you think," he said, vanishing the cuffs around his wrists, "that I would leave myself vulnerable to those things again, headmaster?"

"I confess I don't know how you're unaffected by them," Dumbledore said, his firm tone gone now. It wasn't the politeness of his initial greeting, but it wasn't quite afraid.

Harry said nothing, just gave him a look that made it quite clear Dumbledore would have to be a moron if he thought Harry would reveal his secrets.

"The time has come," Voldemort said. "Kill him, Harry."

There was a surge of noise from the teachers. Several of them, including McGonagall and Bill Weasley, rushed forward to stand before Dumbledore, but before they could reach him, or Voldemort or the Death Eaters could raise their wands to stop them, Dumbledore's voice rang out.

"No! Stay back."

He was utterly commanding now. There was still no fear in his voice, but there was something, the amalgamation of age and earned respect and inherent power, that demanded obedience. The teachers who'd come forwards stopped abruptly and even the Death Eaters around Harry kept their wands only half raised.

"You will all stand back," Dumbledore ordered his staff, looking at each of them in turn. "Not one of you will attempt to defend me."

"Albus—" McGonagall began, but Dumbledore cut her off.

"I forbid it, Minerva. If I am to die, then so be it, but I will not have your lives torn down as well."

"An admirable sacrifice," Voldemort sneered. "They will make a martyr out of you, Dumbledore, but it will be in vain. Do it now, Harry."

Dumbledore's gaze settled on Harry. Harry raised his wand.

"I won't regret this," he told the Headmaster, and cast the Killing Curse for the first time in his life.

In the time it took the bolt of green light to pass from Harry's wand to Dumbledore's chest, and for Dumbledore to be thrown backwards to land limply on the ground, Harry made three Wishes. The first disarmed Voldemort and all his Death Eaters, sending their wands to hover twenty feet above them. The second conjured the same rune-etched shackles that Voldemort used on Harry a year earlier, and snapped them around Voldemort's own wrists. The third created a single massive cage around them all, solid steel bars appearing from nowhere to surround them all. They pushed in, forcing the Death Eaters to huddle into a tight crowd.

" _You could have made another Horcrux with this,"_ Riddle said, and then, _"Dementors."_

Harry looked up. They'd been swarming high above them all, perhaps held at bay by Voldemort's command, but now they were starting to swoop lower. They weren't yet close enough to trigger a seizure, so Harry made a Wish before they could get that close. Right now, the last thing he needed was to be incapacitated.

He wasn't sure if Dementors could die, so he sent them away. He didn't want to return them to Azkaban, not after they'd defected from Ministry control so easily, and he didn't want to send them anywhere they might end up attacking innocent people, so he sent them to Mars. He honestly wasn't sure if his power stretched that far, but the Dementors vanished so he had to assume so.

A couple of teachers and one of the Aurors had rushed to Dumbledore's side, but the others were too stunned to move. Fortunately none of them had the nerve to attack Harry in revenge, and most of them were now gaping at the caged people behind him.

McGonagall was the one to finally break the stunned silence. "You betrayed him."

"He threatened my friends," Harry said simply, "and you, and the other teachers and students. But the curse is broken now, isn't it?"

He looked to Bill, who nodded jerkily, looking angry and upset and apologetic all at once.

"That's what he was trying to tell you, didn't you realise?"

He sounded like he wasn't sure if he wanted Harry to say yes so he could hate Harry absolutely, or say no so he could believe Harry wouldn't have killed Dumbledore if he'd realised.

Harry turned away without answering. He had all he needed to know. His friends were safe from the curse.

He spoke again to McGonagall. "Four of the Aurors guarding the gate Disapparated. I'm guessing they went to the Ministry and reinforcements will arrive soon. Can you handle this lot until they arrive?"

McGonagall looked over the Death Eaters, pale, her lips pressed so tightly together they were barely more than a slash across her face. "You're leaving?"

"Going to Azkaban isn't on my agenda, professor."

She snapped her gaze back to him. "Did you mean what you said? You don't regret…?"

She seemed unable to finish the sentence, but everyone knew what she was asking and they all paid attention to hear his answer, even the Death Eaters stopping their struggles.

"No," Harry said quietly, "I don't, but I'm sorry if that upsets you."

McGonagall gave a single, sharp burst of humourless laughter. "Mr Evans… Harry…" She struggled for a moment, eventually shook her head, and said sadly, "Goodbye, Harry."

Harry felt a tightness in his chest at her tone and expression. He didn't regret killing Dumbledore, but he regretted how it made her feel towards him. McGonagall had always been kind to him, had always looked out for him as much as any teacher could. If Lily had still been alive, Harry hoped she would have had a little bit of Minerva McGonagall in her. It genuinely hurt to have her opinion of him sullied, no matter how well deserved.

Harry held out Dumbledore's wand, handle first. McGonagall took it, and Harry turned away. Bill Weasley threw a curse at him, but Harry had half expected some kind of retaliation as soon as his back was turned and he easily blocked the spell. His gaze, both eyes, fell on Voldemort, and he smiled. He knew he shouldn't brag, but he wanted to make one thing clear.

"Just so you know, I didn't kill Dumbledore because you told me to. I always planned to betray you today; I would have taken away your voice and put you to sleep so you couldn't kill my friends even if Bill Weasley hadn't broken the Word of Death Curse. I killed Dumbledore because _I_ wanted to."

Voldemort's only reaction was to narrow his gaze, but he never had been very expressive.

"Harry!" Sirius yelled. Harry didn't look around, figuring someone had released him from the vines. He didn't care what Sirius had to say.

He was just about to put Voldemort in a coma when he heard the front doors of Hogwarts swing open. He didn't trust the Ministry not to screw up and for Voldemort to get free as soon as he was in their custody. Better for everyone if Voldemort was in a permanent sleep, but not the apparently-dead coma that Harry had put Snape into last year, although he'd considered it over the past few weeks. He wanted the arresting Aurors to know that Voldemort was still alive, so they wouldn't do something stupid like cremate him. They didn't need Voldemort's spirit going off to hide only to return once more in another decade. Voldemort would die as soon as Harry was ready to destroy the rest of his Horcruxes, but no sooner.

But then a familiar voice yelled his name. He spun, all his attention focusing on Draco as he rushed out the front door, almost falling as he hurried down the stone steps.

That was when the knife buried in the back of his shoulder.

* * *

The next few minutes passed in painful, terrified confusion for Harry. He fell to his knees at the impact of the knife, gaze still on Draco, letting him see the horror that crossed his face. He tried to reach around and pull the knife out, but the movement sent pain searing through his back and chest, almost enough to make him collapse. He fell forward, catching himself on one hand, and grit his teeth, Wishing for the knife to vanish instead.

Nothing happened.

At the edge of his vision, Riddle was down on his hands and knees as well, trembling with pain and oddly see-through. He was gasping for breath and looked confused and afraid, which for some reason terrified Harry almost as much as not being able to do magic.

Wands clattered down and people shouted. The Aurors and teachers started throwing spells, bolts of light and wind whizzing around and over Harry. He heard Draco yell his name and saw Sirius try to reach him, but all of a sudden Death Eaters swarmed forwards, clutching their wands and fighting back.

Harry got to his knees, gasping through pain and fear, and scoured the grass for his wand, dropped when he fell. He didn't know why his Wishes weren't working, but with his wand he could cast, he _had_ to cast—

He saw it, not six feet away, and lunged for it in an ungainly motion, ending up sprawled on the ground, fingers barely brushing the wood at the same moment someone's bare foot came down on the wand and snapped it in two. The sudden spike of angry pain in Harry's head told him who it was just as much as the sight of a bare foot.

He lifted his head, gaze moving up the tall, black-robed form, past unbound wrists, to settle on Voldemort's unforgiving white face.

"You're not the only one that planned a double cross today, Harry, and you're not the only one that took precaution against magical bindings."

A passing curse disturbed the air above Harry. It had no light, but as it flew by, familiar runic tattoos were briefly visible on Voldemort's skin, glowing in ultraviolet and covering not only his wrists but every bit of skin that Harry could see, right from his bald head to his bare toes.

Voldemort flicked his wand and Harry screamed as his wrists were suddenly flayed, strips of skin coming away as if he'd stuck them in a paper shredder. The broken remains of his own tattoos became briefly visible on the undamaged skin between wounds before they were covered in blood.

With a few sharp flicks of Voldemort's wand, the chains that'd been around his own wrists two minutes ago flew over and latched themselves around Harry's. They wrenched upwards to pull Harry up into the air, until he hung several feet above the heads of the fighters.

For a moment, he blacked out from the agony of his wrists and shoulder. When he came to, he was drifting forwards. The crowd below was moving into the castle, the fight mostly over, the teachers overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Some of Voldemort's people—ones without masks, probably werewolves and other witches and wizards who supported the cause but had never been inducted as actual Death Eaters—stayed outside, spreading across the grounds or moving down towards the gates, presumably to guard against the incoming reinforcements.

The rest of them headed inside to the Great Hall. There, the house tables were vanished and the teachers and Bill Weasley, some with torn and bloody robes and others showing signs of curses, were corralled into the centre while Death Eaters spread around the edges, wands at the ready. Riddle sprawled against one wall, weak and still weirdly see-through. Harry stayed floating above them, and Dumbledore's corpse was flung up to hang nearby, a macabre trophy. Or perhaps an example of Harry's upcoming fate.

Voldemort sat in the only remaining furniture, the chair that Dumbledore normally sat in. Although the chair was more elaborate than those used by the other teachers, Harry never realised until now how much it looked like a throne.

As some of the Death Eaters removed their masks, Harry realised there were some missing. He didn't see Antonin or Lucius among them, nor was James in the group of teachers underneath Harry. Other teachers were absent too, but Harry wasn't sure exactly which of them had been present before so he didn't know if the missing were dead or hadn't been out in the fight in the first place. He saw McGonagall, unharmed, and Sirius, but he was more concerned by the realisation that Draco wasn't anywhere in the hall.

"Where's Draco?"

All eyes turned up to him. Several of the Death Eaters were smirking and sneering, others looked as if they wanted to curse him. The teachers mostly looked horrified and afraid, but he saw conflict in some of their eyes as they took him in, and Professor Vector looked as if she thought he was getting exactly what he deserved.

"Speak up, Harry," Voldemort called.

Harry sucked in a breath that hurt and demanded again, "Where's Draco?"

Voldemort looked around the room with a false look of concern. "You're right, he is conspicuously absent. Where is young Mister Malfoy?"

The question wasn't aimed at anyone in particular, but Bellatrix, one of those who'd removed their masks, stepped forward. Her face was still half puckered by burn scars. "Lucius took him aside."

"There," Voldemort said to Harry with a mocking smile, "he is perfectly safe."

He flicked his wand and the knife in Harry's shoulder drew out slowly, eliciting a whine of pain from him. Once it was free, it drifted down to Voldemort, who plucked it out of the air and cleaned the blood from the blade. It was an expensive looking but practical small dagger, the handle inlaid with gold filigree and a blue gem set into the hilt.

"This is a remarkable blade," Voldemort said conversationally. "I picked it up in Iran a few months ago. It belonged, a very long time ago, to Cyrus the Great."

Harry's breath hitched. Voldemort's gaze flicked up to him, his teeth bared in a smile.

"I see our young historian recognises it."

"I thought it was a myth," Harry said, drawn as always when it came to discussions of history. "None of the books could confirm its existence."

The blade of Cyrus the Great, rumoured to have been enchanted by his royal consort so that any witch or wizard cut by it would be rendered as powerless as a Muggle as long as they bled from a wound it inflicted. It was said Cyrus had killed his consort with it in a fit of rage, then buried it with her in guilt, but neither her tomb or the dagger had ever been found.

"In my experience, a great deal of things that books dismiss as myths are true. That is why practical experience is as important—more so, even—to education as theory."

Below Harry, Sirius suddenly staggered and gasped, clutching at his chest.

"James!"

McGonagall reached out to aid him, but Sirius shoved her away, pushing through to the edge of the teachers and aiming his wand at Voldemort.

"What did you—"

A curse slammed into him, knocking him off his feet to land writhing on the floor, wand rolling away. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. His eyes rolled in his head and a viscous black liquid dripped out of his ears, eyes, and nose.

"Bellatrix," Voldemort said, and Sirius slumped. He lay gasping for breath, coughing weakly but managing an angry glare as Bellatrix stalked up to stand over him, her wand pointed down at his head.

"You've no right to talk to my lord like that, blood traitor."

Sirius rolled over and spat at her feet. She kicked him in the face.

"Enough, Bellatrix," Voldemort said, rising to his feet as the doors to the Great Hall swung open. "We have children to set an example for."

Two Death Eaters entered the hall, masked, and stood aside to watch as the students of Slytherin filed in. Gasps and fearful cries rang through them at the sight of the people already amassed in the hall—one first year even sobbed—but they were pushed forwards to keep them from trying to flee.

Draco wasn't among them.

After the Slytherins came the Hufflepuffs, looking even more afraid, and then Antonin with the Ravenclaws, and finally, after a brief lull during which the teachers tried to calm the students, the Gryffindors arrived. They must have fought more than the other houses, because a couple were brought in unconscious and others had bruises or minor cuts. Neville was one of the unconscious and Hermione had a cut across her forehead, the blood looking even brighter against her starkly pale face when she saw Harry hanging helplessly in midair.

On the tail end of the Gryffindors, Lucius finally entered. James trailed after him, standing free and apparently unharmed, but with his head down and an attitude of absolute submission. Harry could guess what had been done to him; Lucius had taken back the Animancupium Bond.

But he really couldn't bring himself to care, because beside Lucius was Draco. He appeared unharmed and Harry, despite his own predicament, felt a deep rush of relief at the sight of him. As long as Draco was safe, he didn't care so much about himself, even if he was starting to feel weak from the blood loss.

Draco's gaze lifted to Harry and his face went bone white. He took a single step forwards, but Lucius grabbed his arm and hissed something at him, and Draco stopped. He stayed beside his father rather than join the rest of the students, but his gaze never once left Harry, even when Sirius furiously yelled James' name and scrambled to his feet with the clear intention of attacking Lucius.

He never made it. Lucius' only response to Sirius' outburst was to murmur something to James, who kept his gaze firmly fixed on the floor, but Voldemort flicked his wand and Sirius was wrenched backwards, crashing to the ground where he lay squirming like a pinned worm.

"You are far too much of an irritation, Mr Black," he said, moving to stand over Sirius. "I don't have the patience for outbursts such as yours tonight. _Avada Kedavra_."

There was a burst of green and Sirius went limp and still. Harry felt a sting of grief, regardless of the anger he felt towards Sirius. Despite everything, Harry couldn't forget that Sirius had been the first adult to offer him a real, welcoming home; that counted for something, no matter how bad things ended up between them.

Leaving Sirius' body where it lay, Voldemort returned to the chair he'd left, not sitting again but standing before it and looking across the hall. When he started talking, he did so with no thought to what he'd just done and the effect it would have on those watching, as if killing Sirius had been nothing more than squashing a spider.

"Welcome, students of Hogwarts. As you can see, your headmaster is dead. The boy beside him, one of your very own students, murdered him right out on the lawn. If you don't believe me…"

He raised his wand; several people flinched, and Harry would have been one of them if he'd been in a position _to_ flinch, but Voldemort just made the blood coating Harry's arm scour away to reveal the Dark Mark.

"As you see, he is marked as my own. Given his current position, you may still question his loyalty to me, as you rightly should. He tried to turn on me this night and was overpowered, but he is still a murderer. Ask the teachers who witnessed it."

No one did, but there were questioning looks that turned to horror as the students saw the truth of it in their teachers' expressions. A murmur of noise went around the room, fearful whimpers and shocked gasps and grieving sobs.

"You need not fear me," Voldemort called over the noise, his aura and presence demanding silence. If he'd been a teacher, he would have been one of those in whose class no one dared misbehave, even without threats of detention and point taking. "I have no wish to harm you, even those of you unfortunate enough to be of impure blood. As long as you do not fight against me, all the Mudbloods will be returned to your parents unharmed."

"My lord," a voice called, and all eyes turned towards a masked Death Eater standing by the door. "The Minister For Magic is here, with the Heads of the D.M.L.E and D.O.M."

There was a soft gasp from the students and Harry saw Tyler start to tremble.

"Show them in," Voldemort ordered.

The Death Eater retreated, but quickly returned with Amelia Bones, Rufus Scrimgeour, and Marcus Fleetwood in tow. Amelia, to her credit, only looked briefly horrified by the sight that met her, and then returned her expression to one of anger. Marcus' gaze briefly swept the room to take in the situation before searching out Tyler, relief easing some of the wrinkles in his face when he saw him unharmed. Scrimgeour glowered at everyone, looking as if he was restraining himself from grabbing his wand and throwing curses.

The trio was guided forwards to stand before Voldemort. All three stood straight and uncowed before him.

"Minister, gentlemen," Voldemort greeted. "I shall do you the courtesy of being brief and to the point. I have the majority of wizarding Britain's children at my mercy. Albus Dumbledore is dead. The boy you might have turned to for a saviour is powerless. There is no one left who can stand against me."

He paused to let them absorb that. Scrimgeour glanced around and up to Harry, giving no sign as to what he thought of him. Marcus' gaze never stopped scanning the crowd, looking for threats maybe, or something else perhaps. Harry wasn't sure what sort of things the Head of the Department of Mysteries looked for in these situations. Amelia's eyes never left Voldemort.

"Surrender to me," Voldemort continued. "You are the three most important people in the Ministry of Magic. Surrender your positions so that my own people can step into place."

"If we refuse?" Amelia demanded to know.

Voldemort looked away from her. "Bellatrix."

There was no chance to stop it. She'd clearly known what was expected of her at this point, because she pointed her wand straight at the nearest student—Ed Coleman, one of Harry's former year mates—and said almost gleefully, " _Avada Kedavra!_ "

The sound of Ed's body hitting the floor was lost amidst the screams. It took a moment to restore order, Death Eaters shouting and brandishing their wands until the terrified students settled down, leaving only the sound of sobs to fill the room. A girl Harry didn't recognise had dropped to her knees and pulled Ed's head into her lap, cradling it and crying silently over his limp body.

"I can promise you," Voldemort said to the three Ministry personnel, "that I will kill two-thirds of the student body before I simply give up and kill you, including your niece, Minister Bones, and your son, Mr Fleetwood. I would like to target only the Mudbloods, but the man I sent to fetch the school register seems to have got lost, so they will simply die at random. Then, of course, I will kill you anyway. You may as well surrender now."

"How many will you kill when you've taken command of the Ministry?" Marcus asked. Scrimgeour shot him a dark look, but Marcus' eyes never left Voldemort.

"Students? None, so long as they don't attack me. The children are our future, are they not?"

"And the rest of Britain's citizens?"

"Only those that give me reason."

Marcus looked down at Ed. Harry wondered if he knew that the boy was one of his son's friends. "It seems to me that you don't need much of a 'reason'."

"Do you agree to surrender?" was all Voldemort said.

Amelia, Scrimgeour, and Marcus looked around at the collected, terrified students; at the helpless expressions of the teachers and the smug ones of the Death Eaters; at the dead child on the floor and the dead headmaster in the air. At Harry himself, who they might have hoped would be their saviour, the one to defeat Voldemort again by some miracle, but who now hung in chains, physically weak and magically powerless and with a very short life expectancy.

Harry doubted there was anyone in that room who expected the answer to be anything other than what it was.

"We surrender."


	51. Chapter 51

**Chapter 51**

When Severus' Mark burned on Friday night, he expected Harry to come see him afterward. His mark burning meant Voldemort was calling for everyone, which meant something big, and Severus could guess it was related to Harry's order to kill Dumbledore before the end of the school year.

When Harry didn't turn up, he figured something was wrong. He didn't know what, nor what to do about it. Harry wasn't dead, the emerald pendant told him that much; if Harry died, it would instantly lose any heat or chill, warmed only by Severus' own body, just a useless bit of jewellery.

But Harry wasn't at Hogwarts; the emerald was too warm for that, or for being at home in Coleford, or in London. It didn't leave a lot of options.

Severus spent a while pacing the house and steadily working his way through a bottle of vodka as he tried to figure out what to do. Was Harry captured? Severus had expected Voldemort to turn on Harry once Dumbledore was dead and he no longer needed the boy. Or had Harry refused to kill Dumbledore? What about the Word of Death Curse—had that been enacted? Were Harry's friends dead and Harry was now hiding somewhere, stewing in his misery?

It was nearly three o'clock in the morning when Severus decided to find out, drunk enough to think it was a good idea even with the possibility of Harry being captured by Voldemort. He was still sober enough to take a dose of Polyjuice Potion, using hairs from some lad in the neighbouring village; after what happened last October, Severus decided not to use hairs from people in Cokeworth anymore.

He was also sober enough not to do anything stupid when he followed the emerald pendant and it led him straight to the hospital where Voldemort was based. He wanted to—he wanted to rush in there and pull Harry out, to get his son away from whatever torture he was suffering. It was a stupid, rash impulse born of protective paternal desires, the kind of impulse that, even half-drunk, he knew not to indulge. He had no plan, he didn't know what he was facing if he went in there—he didn't even know if he _could_ get in there—and chances were he would end up either dead or captured as well, and then he'd be no good to Harry.

He was also more terrified than he'd admit at the thought of ending up in Voldemort's 'care' again. One week had been more than enough torture for him. He much preferred a quick death.

There was a lot of traffic at the hospital and Severus left, not wanting to get noticed by the Death Eaters coming and going. That kind of activity was unusual, he knew; it couldn't bode well for Harry.

It was when he got home that he suddenly wondered if Harry was even in trouble. If… something… was happening with the Death Eaters, Harry might be free, but still unable to leave. Severus could have just risked his life and freedom for absolutely no reason.

That thought sent him back to the kitchen for the rest of the vodka, but by the time two mouthfuls had burned their way down his throat, he was doubting it again. Harry really could have been in trouble, and Severus had just left him there. There was nothing he could have done, of course, but he still felt the guilt of potentially abandoning his son to the mercy of the Death Eaters.

The rest of the vodka eased that guilt, at least enough for him to sleep.

The next morning, his pendant was still too warm and there was no sign Harry had been by. He was certain, now, that Harry was a prisoner.

Which left Severus wondering what the fuck he was supposed to do. He wanted to rescue Harry, but how? It would be a lot easier if he knew what had happened; it almost made him regret that Harry was almost his sole contact with the outside world.

But there were other ways to get information. Severus went through the familiar motions of brewing some more hangover reliever, remembering this time to bottle it up instead of leaving it to go off in the cauldron, as he had with the last batch. Once his head was clear, he washed, dressed, took some Polyjuice, and headed for London.

He wasn't comfortable in Diagon Alley or even Knockturn Alley, but the Muggle world was no place for the information he needed. He arrived at the Leaky Cauldron's Apparition room, hood pulled up even over his Polyjuiced form, and was surprised at how busy the place was at nearly eleven o'clock in the morning. It was too late for the breakfast crowd and too early for lunch, but more than half the tables were full, people sitting with their heads close and talking urgently.

As he passed through to the Alley, he caught snatches of conversation, and all his dark suspicions were confirmed.

"… Dumbledore's dead … Evans a murderer … He Who Must Not Be Named at Hogwarts …"

Once he was outside, Severus went straight to the newspaper stand, hexing a witch to start coughing so that he could snatch up the last paper for himself, although he'd already seen the headline on the display board.

 _HARRY EVANS MURDERS DUMBLEDORE_  
 _YOU KNOW WHO TAKES OVER_

According to the accompanying article, Voldemort claimed Harry came to him as a false envoy, pretending that Dumbledore wanted to parley. Voldemort arrived at Hogwarts in good faith only for Harry to murder Dumbledore and bind Voldemort, intending to take over the school. Voldemort had escaped and restrained Harry, protecting the students and teachers. The article repeatedly mentioned Harry's insanity, even saying that he heard voices, and claimed he was now imprisoned in a secure location.

It was obviously complete bollocks, but Severus had seen people drink up whatever the news revealed. The general public might have doubts about Voldemort and the real events of the night before, but they probably believed what they read about Harry being an insane murderer.

Aside from Dumbledore, the only other deaths were Sirius Black and two students—Ed Coleman, and Euan Abercrombie. The Muggleborn students had been sent home, but the rest would remain for the last two weeks of term

Severus stalked down the alley, turning into Knockturn, hand clenching around the newspaper. He forced it all to the back of his mind as he went to the apothecary, getting more ingredients for the Polyjuice and picking up some other ingredients. He wasn't actively planning anything yet, but his mind was already working on ideas and considering what might be useful.

When he got home, he paced, now definitely working on a plan to rescue Harry. He had to. He'd failed Harry too many time before to let him down again.

He was tempted to go for the vodka again, to drink while he thought, but it suddenly occurred to him just how much he'd been drinking recently. He hadn't really noticed it before, but reaching for the bottle when he needed to think, to _focus_ , when his son's life was at risk—that struck a cord in him. He couldn't let his mind be dulled by drink right now, yet the fact that he wanted to drink anyway concerned him.

But now wasn't the time to ruminate on his drinking habits.

He drank coffee instead, and paced the house or sat motionless for hours. His house was so dark he hardly noticed the passing hours and didn't realise night had fallen until there was a crack and Draco Malfoy appeared in his living room. Severus was leaving the kitchen and dropped his fresh mug of coffee as he whipped his wand up.

Draco hardly glanced at him, giving a cry of pain and staring down at his hand, which was missing three fingernails. Severus didn't lower his wand. With Harry captured, he had no idea what it would do to the protections on the house. He'd tested them earlier and all the charms he could detect were still in place, but he didn't know about Harry's own Wish Magic protections.

"What was the last thing I said to you while I was still a teacher?" Severus demanded.

Draco looked up at him. He was starkly pale, which could have been from his injury, but his bloodshot eyes and the dark shadows beneath them didn't come from a Splinching. "What?"

Severus repeated himself.

"I don't know, you were lecturing me on prefect duties or something. What does it matter?"

"I need to know that you're _you_."

"I thought no one else could get in here except you, me, and Harry."

"Prove yourself, Draco."

"I wouldn't have bloody Splinched myself if I was someone else, would I?" Draco snapped, and when Severus' wand didn't lower he sighed irritably. "Look, I don't remember the last thing you said to me as a teacher, but when I was eight you came around the manor for dinner and caught me stuffing dung bombs in Mrs Parkinson's purse, but you never told anyone it was me even when Pansy got blamed. Is that enough?"

Severus lowered his wand. "It'll do. What are you doing here, Draco? I thought all the students were to remain at Hogwarts for the rest of term."

Draco looked up sharply. Severus gestured to the newspaper dumped on the sofa.

"I don't believe you managed to sneak past the Death Eaters undoubtedly guarding the school now."

"I went home," Draco admitted. "Father convinced the Dark Lord to let me go. He agreed as long as Aunt Bellatrix came with me. She's living at the manor now."

"And you still snuck out? Are you trying to get yourself killed? And your mother? She'll pay for your misbehaviour, Draco."

Draco went ashen, but didn't leave. "I had to talk to you. Besides, Aunt Bella won't know. I had the house elf drug her drink with a sleeping potion."

Severus sighed and shook his head, but he was too glad to get information to send him away now he'd come. "Tell me what really happened last night."

"I don't know all the details," Draco admitted. "Only what Father told me, but Harry really did kill Dumbledore."

Severus wasn't surprised.

"Sir, can you do anything about this?" Draco asked, looking down at his hand again.

"I can give you a painkiller for it, but I can't heal it."

He fetched a vial and sat down opposite Draco once the boy had downed it, getting as much information as Draco had about the night before. Draco had found a brief message from Harry on his bed when he returned to his dorm at curfew. All it said was that Harry would be in contact with him 'whatever happened'.

Then an announcement went through the school ordering all students to their houses immediately, and soon after the Bloody Baron and another of the school ghosts arrived, escorting the thoroughly disgruntled (and in some cases half-drunk) OWL and NEWT students whose post-exam party had been rudely interrupted. Cid Villiers and Tyler Lyle were the last two students to arrive, but neither had come from the party.

"Bill Weasley broke the Word of Death Curse," Draco told Severus. "Lyle and Villiers were in Dumbledore's office, and they were there when the report came that the Dark Lord was coming. The teachers were going to fight, but the students couldn't escape because _he_ was already at the gate—and Harry was with him." Draco looked down at his hand, cheeks reddening whether with embarrassment or shame as he said, "I used some Instant Darkness Powder—that's—"

"I know what it is," Severus interrupted. He'd indulged a curiosity and visited Weasley Wizard Wheezes under disguise. He was reluctantly impressed by some of their inventions, but mostly he was just glad not to be a teacher anymore. "You shouldn't have done it."

"I had to see Harry, I had to tell him—"

"It was not your job!" Severus snapped. "Don't you think Dumbledore—or Black and Potter—would have made him aware of the curse being broken? You could have been killed, Draco."

"I know." His undamaged hand clenched in a fist, grinding against his thigh. "I don't care. I'd have deserved it. At least then…"

"What are you talking about? Since when were you suicidal?"

"It was my fault," Draco spat. "It's my fault Harry got caught. I deserve to die for that."

"Explain."

"When I reached the Entrance Hall, I couldn't get the doors open at first, but I saw through the window. I saw Harry kill Dumbledore and then tie up the Dark Lord and all the Death Eaters. Harry spoke to Professor McGonagall afterwards, but then he turned to leave and I couldn't—I didn't want him to go without saying something." He paused, swallowing thickly. "Professor Flitwick unlocked the front door and I ran out and called Harry's name…"

"And?" Severus demanded when Draco trailed off.

"Harry turned to look at me, and the Dark Lord broke free. I don't know how, but he threw a knife at Harry and then he freed all the Death Eaters as well. There was a fight—I tried to reach Harry, but I couldn't get through, and then Harry was chained up and hanging in the air. His wrists were…" He hunched over suddenly, burying his face in his hands, and his voice cracked. "I-it was my f-fault," he said, and Severus was horrified to realise he was crying, shoulders shaking. "I distracted him. If I hadn't gone out there, if I hadn't been so selfish, he'd be safe and free."

"Sobbing about it won't help anything," Severus said, uncaring of how harsh it came out. Draco's self-blame was fully justified and the boy was too old and the situation too serious for Severus to treat with kid gloves. "What happened afterwards?"

Draco sniffed and pressed the balls of his hand into his eyes. "Father reached me. He told me Harry was a traitor and wasn't worthy of whatever feelings I have for him, and warned me not to do anything stupid. He had James Potter unconscious and he made me come with him while he did that Animancupium spell while everyone else went to the Great Hall."

That explained why there was no news of Potter dying when Black had.

Draco went on to explain everything that happened in the Great Hall and how Harry was now being held in some unknown location while Voldemort performed 'experiments', whatever that meant. When he finished talking, Severus took a moment to rub his temples, slumped in his armchair and wishing he'd drunk that vodka earlier.

"What do we do now?"

Severus dropped his hands and looked across at Draco. "You will go home. If your absence is noted, you'll come under suspicion. They'll be watching you closely right now; you shouldn't have come."

"I had to tell you!" Draco objected. "Harry's captured, there has to be some way to get him free!"

"There may be, but—"

"There _may_ be? That's not good enough! Do you know what he's going through right now?"

"Better than you," Severus snapped, his tone sharp enough to make Draco snap his mouth shut with a click of his teeth. Severus forced himself to calm down, taking a deep breath before speaking again. "I will do what I can to save him, but you have to return home and _not draw attention_. If the Dark Lord thinks you're acting against him, you'll get to see Harry when you're locked in a cage with him. If he finds out you know I'm alive, he'll kill your whole family."

Draco went even paler. "But he doesn't know you're alive," he croaked.

"For now. Harry's Occlumency might not withstand extreme torture. You should be extremely careful with your own."

"But I can help."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Sir, please—"

"Draco, anything you try to do for Harry will only get you killed."

"I have to help!" Draco cried, sitting so far forward on the sofa he was at serious risk of falling off. "It was my fault, I can't abandon him."

Severus sighed irritably. "Draco, we do not have the time for you to insist on self-sacrificial attempts to help. I will do what I can for Harry; you will go home and not draw attention to yourself."

Draco opened his mouth, looking offended at Severus' words, but whatever argument he planned to give faltered under Severus' glare. His offended look turned sulky.

"What if I find something out?"

Severus doubted Draco could learn anything worthwhile, but he did have a high ranking Death Eater for a father, and the world was about to change a hell of a lot, so it was possible. It would ease the boy's guilt a little, too, which would make him less likely to do something stupid.

"Do you know what happened to Harry's belongings?"

"I've got them," Draco admitted. "I packed them up and took them with me, but I don't know what he might have left at his home."

"Nothing important, I imagine. You should find a Muggle notebook among his things. It's thin and will appear empty, but it's charmed to duplicate everything written in it to a twin that I have. You can use that to contact me, but only if it's _absolutely necessary_."

Draco nodded.

"Now go. And focus when you Apparate; calm yourself, or you'll Splinch worse than a few nails."

Draco stood up, closed his eyes, took a steadying breath, then furrowed his brow with concentration before twisting and disappearing. He left behind a few stray blond hairs which fluttered to the threadbare carpet.

* * *

Severus' first rescue attempt was done solo, and it took him a month to prepare. He was out of Poyjuice Potion (another sign that he'd been drinking too much; he should never have let his stock get so low) and it was crucial to the plan he formulated. As well as that, he had to find out what protections were on Harry.

Draco provided a little more information than Severus thought he might; as well as Bellatrix living in Malfoy Manor, other Death Eaters visited regularly, particularly Antonin Dolohiv and Merrick Mulciber. Narcissa was none too happy about it, but you didn't say no to Voldemort, and she had to know her son, and herself by connection, was under watch because of sympathies towards Harry.

Draco had seen his father a few times, but he was more disenchanted by Lucius these days, and Narcissa was still angry at him, an anger not eased by Lucius taking Potter as a Slave again. As such, Lucius had been around far less than Antonin or Mulciber.

Severus got other information from newspapers and eavesdropping. He'd become apt at disguising himself—Polyjuice was preferable, but transfiguration was sufficient when he had to—and merging into the background of a crowd to listen was a skill he'd honed during his teenage years. The only people it'd never worked against were Potter and Black, much to his dismay.

Harry was vilified for weeks, several scattered reports revealing his various crimes as a Death Eater over the past year, all clearly intended to give people a target other than Voldemort for their fear and hatred. Even so, for a short while there was rebellion. Voldemort's takeover had not be quiet; everyone knew that Pius Thicknesse, the new Minister for Magic, was utterly under Voldemort's control. The members of the Order and brave civilians fought back, at first, but then people disappeared in far larger numbers than before or were outright murdered, with no pretence made over why. Once the public executions started, the fighting all but stopped.

Amelia Bones, Rufus Scrimgeour, and Marcus Fleetwood were dead. Tyler Lyle was missing, but it was unclear whether this was Death Eater activity or not. Draco reported that he'd written to Cid Villiers, who said Tyler had been living with him and the Swifts at the time he'd gone missing, two days after Marcus' murder.

All the while Muggleborns were being rounded up, their wands snapped before they were thrown out on the streets. Severus disapproved, but he knew that he might have agreed with it if the law had been about taking Muggleborns from their families and raising them as wizards, erasing the Muggle parents' memories.

He knew his opinion wasn't shared by those he used to be in the Order with, but he suspected it was one held by more of wizarding Britain than his colleagues would like. Muggleborns could be just as strong at magic as any pureblood, but their families could also cause a lot of trouble. Just look at the Evans family—how much better would Lily have been without having to deal with Petunia's hate?

How much better would Harry have been?

Not that any of it mattered. Severus' opinions on the laws and politics of the country were utterly irrelevant; right then, the only thing that mattered was saving Harry and getting them both as far away from Britain as possible. Life in Australia would probably do them both the world of good.

Severus' plan was, theoretically, fairly simple. He would kidnap a Death Eater and use Polyjuice Potion to sneak into the hospital, taking the Death Eater with him, transfigured into something he could easily carry. It wouldn't work for most people; the protections on the hospital were tailored to only allow entry to people bearing the Dark Mark, or those under personal escort by a Death Eater, and Polyjuice couldn't fake that. Once inside, Severus would find Harry, transfigure the kidnapped Death Eater back to human, and force feed them Polyjuice with Harry's hair in. By the time anyone realised what happened, Severus and Harry would be long gone.

Assuming nothing went wrong, anyway.

Severus' target Death Eater was Walden Macnair. Although he'd been arrested in February 1995 and escaped Azkaban that following October, he was back at the Ministry working as an executioner, albeit for humans rather than animals now. He wasn't the only former convict back there, either; several Death Eaters had retaken positions they'd lost after Voldemort's resurrection.

Macnair was suitable for Severus' purposes not because of that, however, but because he was vicious and weak-willed, but not stupid. His job didn't quite satisfy his violent urges, so he tended to go to the hospital and assault Harry in his free time. It meant he knew about the protections on Harry, the circumstances surrounding him, and who tended to visit often.

He was also utterly unable to resist the Imperius Curse, which meant it was easy for Severus to subdue him and walk him off somewhere quiet to learn all this information.

The new batch of Polyjuice was finally ready by mid-July. Severus interrogated Macnair again a few days beforehand, just to make sure there weren't any new developments regarding Harry that he needed to know.

There weren't, but when Friday came, the day of Severus' plan, Macnair never showed up to work. Severus planned to grab him afterwards, when Macnair went for his usual after-work drink at the Leaky Cauldron, but Severus stayed in the late-night cafe opposite the entrance to the Ministry and Macnair never appeared.

Had something happened with Harry and the Death Eaters, or did Macnair just decide to take a day off?

Severus tried the Leaky Cauldron in case Macnair decided to start a weekend bender early, but he wasn't there, nor the Hogs Head or Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade. Severus returned home furious and frustrated enough to storm for the kitchen and reach for his vodka. He cracked it open, but stopped short of drinking any.

Why hadn't Macnair been at work today?

The answer came from Draco. Severus checked the charmed notebook regularly and this evening found a message from Draco.

 _Harry tried to escape. Aunt Bella says he stabbed Walden Macnair._

Severus summoned a quill so fast it stabbed his palm. He yanked it out, swearing, and scribbled a reply, not even hesitating to use his blood for ink.

 **Macnair dead?**

Draco must have been watching the book, because a reply came almost instantly.

 _No. Stabbed in the eye. Bella says the Dark Lord has forbidden him from getting it healed or replaced, as punishment for letting Harry get the upper hand on him._

 **News on Harry?**

 _Still captured._

Severus threw down his quill, summoned the vodka, but stopped short of drinking it. He slammed the bottle down on the side table and buried his face in his hands, rubbing his temples. He could all too easily imagine the punishment Harry was suffering for an attempted escape.

When he lowered his hands, there was more writing in the book.

 _You have to get him out._

Severus flipped it shut, grabbed the vodka, and threw the whole bottle at the wall. He didn't need Draco to tell him _that_.

* * *

On Saturday, Macnair was back at work. Severus saw him at the execution of Dedalus Diggle, who'd been caught giving wands to Muggleborns. They took place on the main road of Hogsmeade, the public were strongly encouraged to attend and a certain number of Ministry employees were forced to. The victims were decapitated and afterwards the heads were piked in Diagon Alley.

Macnair had a bandage wrapped around half his face, covering his right eye, but the injury hadn't done his enthusiasm for murder any harm. He seemed, to Severus, to have a particularly vicious swing to his wand as he cast the Decapitation Curse. Severus suspected he would prefer to be wielding an axe like he did for killing animals, but beheading was a messy business and apparently the new system didn't want that. The Decapitation Curse cauterised as it cut.

As Macnair lifted Diggle's head by the hair and swung it about for everyone to see, Severus knew he couldn't use Macnair for his plan anymore. If Draco was right and Macnair wouldn't be getting his sight repaired, Severus couldn't pretend to be him. He would need all his senses to infiltrate the hospital and save Harry; limited vision was a handicap he couldn't go in with.

Fortunately—for Severus—there were others who liked to torture Harry. Bellatrix was an obvious first, but Severus had never used Polyjuice with a female hair and he'd heard it could be disorientating. He didn't need that distraction when he was trying to save Harry.

Merrick Mulciber was a second, better choice. Severus had gone to school with him, though they'd fallen apart after Hogwarts. Among the Death Eaters, Severus became disenchanted with what they actually did and stood for whilst Mulciber found himself. He excelled at the Imperius Curse, but he had mean streak in him which led to him getting arrested shortly before Voldemort's downfall.

In school, Severus had excused it as teenage machismo, so eager to have a friend that he'd dismissed Mulciber's behaviour, even when Lily pointed it out to him. But it meant Severus would be able to emulate Mulciber, and he would be able get to Harry just as well as if he pretended to be Macnair.

All he had to do was find him. Mulciber had been living in a safehouse after the Azkaban breakout, but when Severus went there now he found the house completely abandoned. He wasn't really surprised; it was the only one he'd been permitted to know the location of, and it had probably been abandoned after Potter told Voldemort about Severus' disloyalty.

Mulciber also wasn't amongst those to take gainful employment under the new regime. He was still acting as part of the Death Eater raids, breaking into the homes of blood traitors and Muggleborns, torturing and killing those that the Ministry couldn't make even a semi-plausible case against for public execution. The attacks were doing as much, if not more, as the executions to scare people into keeping quiet about the changes going on.

So, reluctantly, Severus enlisted Draco's help. Mulciber was one of those who regularly visited Malfoy Manor—it seemed Dolohov was no longer enough to satisfy Bellatrix. Severus had initially been annoyed with Draco's page long description of the fight between Bellatrix and Dolohov when the latter learned of Bellatrix's unfaithfulness (which he really should have expected, and which hadn't stopped him coming around, preferring to share her than lose her entirely), but it was useful information now.

He sent word to Draco asking that he tell Severus the next time Mulciber visited Bellatrix at the manor, intending to ambush him when he left. Unfortunately this plan meant he was once again spending a lot of time in his house with nothing to do, which left him thinking of vodka more often than he liked. He promised himself he wouldn't drink a drop until Harry was rescued, a promise he'd kept to so far, but it wasn't like he'd suffered any withdrawal from going dry in the past month—not that he'd expected to, not _really_ —so would it really be so bad if he had a few shots?

He forced himself to refrain. Harry needed him. He couldn't compromise that even slightly.

He flicked through the demon books once or twice, but he'd been through them all before and knew they were all worthless. No book was going to help him save his son's soul from a hell dimension. As far as he could tell, _nothing_ would save Harry from that.

It did occur to him that he could save Harry from his current predicament with a demon deal. He quickly dismissed the idea for now—he had a plan of his own, one that didn't involve damning himself to hell—but he kept it in mind for later, if his own plans failed.

When word came from Draco that Mulciber was in house, it was late evening a week before Harry's birthday. Severus cursed, in the middle of brewing a poison; it gave him something to do and he was thinking of finding a way to dispatch it among the Death Eaters. He could do some damage to Voldemort's ranks and the new system before he disappeared to Australia with Harry.

It was a waste of ingredients, but he had no choice but to vanish the potion now; leaving it unfinished only meant he'd come back to find his house on fire. He put out the fire beneath the cauldron, hurriedly changed into some bigger robes, pocketed a few small vials of Polyjuice Potion, and cast some hasty transfigurations on his face. He'd gotten better at them over the last month, at least when it came to transfiguring his own face.

He Disapparated, reappearing in the village that was less than a mile from Malfoy Manor. He didn't want to risk appearing directly on the road outside the manor itself, preferring to walk so he could see anyone that might be on it. He contemplated putting a Disillusionment Charm on himself, but they were more obvious on a moving figure and someone hiding under the charm would draw more attention than someone just taking a walk.

He put one on once he reached the manor, after walking past the gates and finding a tree to hide himself behind. It wasn't ideal—it was the only tree on the road that wasn't on the Malfoys' property—but it was enough, hopefully. Then all he had to do was wait.

It didn't take long. Either Bellatrix only wanted Mulciber for a quickie (which the old rumours certainly suggested, although if she took a man to her actual bed it was usually for longer—or so Severus had heard) or Mulciber didn't satisfy. The latter, Severus thought, if Mulciber's expression was anything to go by when he came out. Dolohov might be lucky enough to get a second chance.

None of that mattered to Severus, however. He straightened up from the tree, carefully aimed his wand as Mulciber turned out of the driveway and moved a short distance down the street, away from the anti-apparition charms that stretched a little beyond the Malfoy's property.

The moment Mulciber stopped and readjusted his robes, Severus conjured ropes to bind him, wrapping around wrists, ankles, and mouth. He couldn't use the Imperius Curse like he had on Macnair; Mulciber could resist it. Binding him was quieter than a Stunning Spell, and even before Mulciber toppled over Severus darted forwards, grabbed him, and Apparated away.

He didn't take him to Spinner's End—he wasn't sure he _could_ take him to Spinner's End—but in the past month Severus had discovered that Black Stag House was abandoned, empty of any personal belongings but still furnished. The dust inside it was completely undisturbed; no one had been there since Harry, Black, and Potter left for Hogwarts last September. It made it a good temporary location to use.

Severus threw Mulciber down on the living room floor, and broke both his knees with a quick hex when Mulciber tried to kick him. As Mulciber lay groaning, Severus bent over him, caught his eyes, and cast Legilimency. He knew what he needed to about Harry and the protections on him, but it was good to get an idea of Mulciber's life now if he planned to imitate him.

It wasn't much different to Mulciber's life as a young man—he partied late, went on raids, and slept all morning, apparently trying to make up for those lost years in Azkaban despite the fact no self-respecting thirty-seven year old should be behaving like that. He made his living by stealing from those he raided, or putting innocent people under the Imperius and getting them to clear out their Gringotts' accounts. He was still close friends with Wilson Avery, who'd they'd also gone to school with; estranged from his wife Siobhán, the girl he'd married right out of school; and, as Severus thought, he distinctly underwhelmed Bellatrix in the bedroom, a fact she'd been very blunt about, much to the dismay of Mulciber's ego. Aside from her, his only romantic entanglements were with young women under the Imperius Curse.

Severus withdrew from his mind and Stunned him, then yanked a few hairs from his head and transfigured him into a small wooden doll. It still mostly looked like Mulciber; Severus had never transfigured a whole person before and he was only interested in making something easily portable, not creating anything elaborate.

He took a potion vial from his pocket, added the hair to it, and swirled it briefly, watching the potion turn the grey colour of wet concrete. He didn't hesitate to drink it; he'd taken enough Polyjuice in the past year that the taste barely made him grimace now. He was already dressed for Mulciber's larger size, so once the transformation was done he just shrugged himself to settle in, tucked the doll into his pocket, and then Disapparated.

He reappeared at the hospital and had to force revulsion and fear down beneath his Occlumency shields. He'd always disliked the place, uncomfortable in the dead remains of a place which used to house insane Muggles who were tortured in the name of healing them. The fear was a new sensation, though, brought with memories of his week locked up there. He didn't want to end up like that again.

But he would risk it, for Harry.

He strolled into the building, working to keep his pace steady and slow. Nerves and fear made him want to move quickly, and his usual pace was fairly fast anyway, but Mulciber moved at a confident amble. It would draw attention if Severus didn't move the same.

The protective spells let him by, detecting his Dark Mark, and he paused just inside the entrance, inhaling the stink of mould they'd never managed to get rid of, and desperately wishing he had a shot of vodka to burn the scent from his throat.

"Merrick!"

A woman in frumpy robes and with a face that looked as if it'd been slammed into a brick wall several times leapt up from a chair beside the door, dropping a copy of _Witch Weekly_ on the floor so she could tug at her robes and pat down her wispy hair. She smiled at Severus, the expression as crooked as her teeth but sincere, and fluttered her eyelashes at him. Or at least attempted to; it looked more like a butterfly having a seizure, especially as her eyelids were heavily coloured in pink and blue.

Alecto Carrow. A guard on the door was new, but Severus had learned of it in Macnair's mind. Severus just wished it'd been someone else.

"How are you today, Merrick?" Alecto asked sweetly.

"Busy," Severus replied curtly, stepping away from her.

Alecto pouted, looking rather like a duck. "I thought we could go for a walk through the field."

Severus stared at her. Mulciber was not the sort who took walks though fields. Not even the far-from-romantic, overgrown mess of a field next to the hospital.

Alecto reached out and placed a hand on Severus' arm, squeezing the solid muscle beneath his taut robes. "Maybe you've got time after you're done here?"

Severus jerked away from her. "Carrow," he began, then stopped short, realising just soon enough that he couldn't tear her down with a polysyllabic insult. Even if she understood it, it wouldn't be in character for Mulciber, who, while not stupid, was generally vulgar and to the point. Severus sought for a suitable put-down, and eventually settled for saying crudely, "I'd rather fuck a hippogriff. It'd be more attractive."

She stepped back, mouth dropping open, and Severus felt the smug pleasure of outraging someone, even if it wasn't as satisfying as truly tearing into someone with a sharply-placed insult. Then Alecto's hand swung up and Severus barely jerked back in time to avoid getting slapped.

"You… you… cad!" She fumbled in her pocket for her wand. Severus didn't give her the chance, whipping up his own and fixing the point between her eyes before she could even get a grip on hers.

"Don't try me, Carrow."

Alecto's eyes were fixed on his wand. "That's not yours."

Severus' eyes flickered briefly to his wand, confused, then realised—it was _his_ wand, not Mulciber's. Alecto's crush on him must be serious if she'd been watching him enough to recognise his wand.

He thought quickly. "I misplaced mine. This is a spare. Don't you have guard duty to get on with?"

Her lip curled, an ugly expression of anger twisting her already unattractive face, but she backed up a step, dropping into her chair. Severus lowered his wand and backed up a couple of steps before turning and moving down the hall. He kept his footsteps as gentle as he could manage under Mulciber's weight, listening carefully in case Alecto tried to curse him in the back. Whether afraid and uncaring, she didn't, and he turned the corner to safety.

He darted into an empty room where, heart pounding, and briefly returned Mulciber to normal so he could take his wand. It didn't work well for him, but he was able to put a glamour of his own wand to make them look alike. That done, he returned Mulciber to a doll and carried on in search of Harry.

The same room he'd been held in last time seemed the best place to start so Severus headed for it, satisfied to feel the pendant growing warmer against his chest as he went. That satisfaction died a quick death when he reached the open door and finally saw Harry.

He hovered in mid-air, naked and half-starved, his wrists locked in shackles and a thick metal collar around his throat, a taut chain connecting it to the back wall. Unfamiliar runes were carved into his chest, arms, legs, back, and cheeks, most of them still trickling blood down his skin, and he hung stiffly, his muscles tense, back perfectly straight.

His wrists were marked with viciously healed scars, intersected in places with black marks that Severus didn't understand, and all his fingers were broken, his hands purple and swollen. His left eyelid sagged over an empty socket and the right was a mutilated mess, a vicious half-healed cut tearing down below it, reaching almost to his mouth.

"Merrick."

Severus' gaze snapped aside and cold terror coiled around his spine as he laid eyes on Voldemort, but old habits kicked in, and he bowed deeply, murmuring, "My lord."

Voldemort twitched his hand and Harry spun slightly to face Severus directly. "Quite the mess Walden made of young Harry's face, don't you think?"

Severus wondered if it would be safe to take the time to find and murder Macnair before he left the country with Harry.

But he answered, wishing he could choke on the words. "It's nothing more than he deserves."

Voldemort hummed a soft noise, whether agreement or something else it was impossible to tell.

He made a sharp gesture with his hand and Harry dropped, hitting the floor with a soft cry that wasn't quite drowned out by the rattle of the chain. He turned onto his side, pressing his cheek to the tiled floor, and breathed like he was trying not to scream. Severus saw recent burns on the soles of his feet.

"Harry has been most unhelpful to me today, as always. You know what that means, Harry?"

Harry whimpered.

" _Crucio_."

Staying where he was was the hardest thing Severus had ever done. He trembled with the effort of remaining in place, of not leaping in to defend Harry from the curse. His scream pierced Severus' ears and rattled through his head…

If it went on much longer, he wasn't sure he could stand it.

Voldemort stopped the curse after the longest thirty seconds of Severus' life. Harry's screams faded to gasping whimpers, but they continued to echo in Severus' mind even as Harry fell into a seizure.

"Try not to break him," Voldemort said, then swept out the room. Severus closed his eyes, listening to the fading footsteps, and only when he heard the distant sound of a door open and close did he open his eyes and drop to his knees beside Harry.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, the words like ash in his mouth. What good were apologies after he'd just stood by and watched his son get tortured. "I'm sorry, Harry."

He conjured a pillow under Harry's thrashing head, waiting anxiously for the seizure to stop. When it did, he cleared the vomit from Harry's mouth and healed the cuts across his skin as Harry drifted back to consciousness. He cast a few spells on Harry's hands, trying to reduce the swelling and restore circulation. They needed a healer's touch, he knew, but he thought he could do enough to at least save his hands for now.

He could do nothing for the burns across the soles of Harry's feet; this was evidently his punishment for attempting to escape, something to ensure he couldn't do it again.

When he'd done as much as he felt safe doing, he cautiously laid a hand gently against Harry's dark hair, only to jerk back when Harry flinched, letting out a terrified, " _No!_ "

Severus had dealt with a broken heart before. He'd felt the pain of a lost friendship, of seeing the girl he loved married to a boy he hated. He'd felt the agony of guilt at knowing his own actions had led to Lily's death and Harry's miraculous survival, of learning that his self-pitying behaviour had left Harry in an abusive home, of over and over again making mistakes that hurt the people he wanted to protect.

None of it hurt as much as what he felt right then. He didn't know anything could hurt that badly, and he didn't think anything could ever feel worse.

But then he tried to release Harry and found charms on the chain, collar, and shackles—Magic Locked charms that meant only one person could undo them. The metal was even charmed against curses to destroy it, and even the point where the chain was stuck to the wall was charmed so Severus couldn't pull it out and take Harry with him, chains and all.

He'd snuck his way in here, he'd watched his son tortured with the most painful curse known to man, and now there was absolutely nothing he could do to help him.


	52. Chapter 52

**Chapter 52**

When Severus was fifteen, he wanted to kill Sirius Black and James Potter.

When he eighteen, he finally had the money and connections to purchase the requisite ingredients to brew a poison, but he was too afraid of being caught to go through with his numerous plans.

When he was nineteen, he discovered that murdering someone left a foul taste in his mouth and a sick sensation in his stomach that only time would ease. He liked to imagine that killing someone he hated, instead of some stranger that Voldemort pointed him at, would be less sickening, but he couldn't convince himself of it enough to go through with his old poisoning plans.

When he was thirty-seven, he found that murdering someone for revenge was less sickening than murdering anyone else, but that it didn't make him feel any better about the harm done to him.

Never in all those years had he thought he could willingly kill someone who'd never personally hurt him. Now he found that it was all too easy. In revenge of Harry, he was glad to cull the Death Eater numbers. It had the added bonus of ensuring they couldn't hurt Harry further.

If he was prone to self-introspection, he would also admit that killing Walden Macnair and Merrick Mulciber was as much about attempting to assuage his own guilt over leaving Harry behind, but he preferred manufacturing deaths to thinking about his feelings.

He simply vanished the transfigured form of Mulciber, but he got more creative with Macnair. He slipped a few drops of Intoxication Potion into his beer at the Leaky Cauldron one evening, caught him with an Imperius Curse, walked him to the Thames, and cast a Heavyweight Hex on his feet before sending him into the water. The Intoxication Potion worked with the beer to make sure Macnair was too drunk to cast a Bubblehead Charm or remove the hex on his feet. It wasn't half as vicious as Severus would have liked, but he didn't want to draw attention.

It didn't help his guilt over what he'd done to Harry.

The evening he walked Macnair into the river - two days after his failed rescue attempt - he remained in London, walking through the streets until he followed a young woman who he'd seen purchasing drugs she'd paid for on her knees, someone with no future to lose, which was exactly what he needed.

It'd occurred to him, when he'd realised that his only way of freeing Harry was to make a demon deal, that it didn't necessarily have to be _him_ who made the deal. He really didn't want to end up in hell ten years from now, but he had no qualms about enchanting a worthless drug addict to make the deal for him.

He followed the young woman to a house which, although small and in disrepair, appeared empty aside from the young woman. She stopped in the middle of a living room, casting her eyes furtively around the barren room. The only furniture was a sofa, piled lumpily with blankets, and a coffee table, the glass top heavily scratched and littered with drug paraphernalia. The woman knelt by the table, hands shaking slightly as she began to prepare her drugs.

Severus didn't let her get far. He quietly stepped up behind her, pointed his wand at the back of her head, and said softly, " _Imperio_."

The woman stopped what she was doing with the drugs - and then slumped forwards over the table, unconscious. Severus blinked at her, baffled, then jerked his wand towards the pile of blankets on the sofa as it shifted. The moment he caught a glimpse of dark hair, he cast a Stunning Spell.

It hit the blankets and fizzled out.

The blankets fell down as the person beneath them sat up. A vaguely familiar face turned towards Severus, green eyes peering up at his own hooded features, dark hair hanging as lank and greasy as Severus' own, framing the pale, sunken cheeks but failing to cover the lightning bolt-shaped scar on the forehead.

"Do you wanna tell me why you just tried to Imperio my roommate," the Assistant asked, "or shall I just hand you over to the Ministry and let them deal with it?"

Severus didn't lower his wand, but he didn't cast any spells. "Either you've been taking these drugs yourself, or you're extremely out of the loop if you think the current Ministry would actually charge me for using the Imperius Curse on a Muggle."

"Both of those would be correct, actually," the Assistant said, fighting his way out of the blankets to swing his legs around and plant his feet on the floor. He wore ragged jeans and a jumper, both too big for him, but he still had the collar that Severus had seen the last few times he'd met the Assistant. The Assistant never talked about it, but Severus could guess it came from Yaxley; where was he now? "I take it the Dark Lord's taken over, the wizarding world is a victim of totalitarian regime, and in a few years the Muggle government will either fall in or declare war on us all."

"You don't sound like you care."

"I don't. This time next year, it'll be none of my concern. In fact, it's none of my concern now. My only concern right now -" he reached across the table and tugged a baggie of white powder from under the unconscious young woman's cheek "- is getting high."

He waved a hand over the baggie and it duplicated itself. He tossed the duplicate back to the woman and kept the original for himself, pulling a needle and syringe and various other bits from across the table, but didn't actually use any of them. He looked up at Severus.

"Why are you here, anyway? Who are you? Anyone important? Can't be a Death Eater; you wouldn't be skulking about if you were, not if the Dark Lord's in charge, but you're obviously not a good and upstanding wizard. What'd you want Mel for?"

Severus debated whether to reveal himself, glanced around, asked, "Is anyone else here?"

The Assistant looked around. "Doesn't look like it. Sally and May are probably working. Why?"

Severus hesitated then tugged his hood back, touched his wand to his face, and undid his transfigurations. The Assistant watched his face return to normal, looking supremely unsurprised. When Severus lowered his wand, the Assistant looked down, turning his attention to his drugs.

"It won't work."

"Pardon?"

The Assistant gestured at Mel with a spoon. "Using the Imperius Curse to get her to make a demon deal. It won't work."

Severus gaped. "How…?"

"The Dark Lord's in charge and you're sneaking about putting Unforgivable Curses on Muggles. Not hard to guess Harry's in dire clutches and you want to get him free. Surprised he's still alive, actually." The Assistant glanced up, spoonful of powder in one hand and lighter in the other. "Unless you're looking to deal for his resurrection."

"No, he's not dead. Why won't it work?"

The Assistant looked back to his works. "Demon won't deal with someone not acting in their own free will. I've tried it - Imperius, potions, even the Animancupium. No go. I take it your rescue attempts have failed. What's the date, anyway? How long's Harry been… wherever he is? Also, does everyone know you're alive now?"

"He's at the hospital, he's been there too long, and no, no one knows I'm alive." Severus paused, then: "Are you able -"

"No."

"I didn't even finish."

"Still no." The Assistant dropped his lighter and reached for a cigarette filter which he dropped into the liquid now filling the spoon. "I'm out, Severus. Harry knows that, the Dark Lord knows that, Dumbledore knew that. Whatever's going on in the wizarding world, it's none of my business. I'm just getting high and looking out for my roomies until my time loop resets."

Severus' lip curled. "You would rather tend to drug addicted whores than your…"

The Assistant looked up, smiling thinly as Severus trailed off. "My what, Severus? What's Harry to me? I like the kid well enough, but I never developed any relationship with him. I'm not invested enough to save his arse. At this point, I probably wouldn't even bother to save yours."

Severus never expected him to, but he wasn't above trying to be manipulative and he remembered what the Assistant had told him and Harry back on New Years.

"What about Draco?"

The Assistant stilled, just about to fill a syringe with his prepared drug. "What happened to Draco?"

"Nothing… yet."

The Assistant gave an unamused grin. "Are you threatening him, Severus? You don't expect me to believe that, do you? You wouldn't hurt an innocent teenager, and Harry's smitten with the boy; he'd hate you if you did anything to Draco."

"You're right, I wouldn't," Severus said, "but the Dark Lord will when he finds out that Draco's known for months that I'm alive."

The Assistant sighed irritably. He filled his syringe and tossed down everything else, picking up a rubber tourniquet then leaning back against the sofa. "Did Harry have a reason for telling Draco about you or was he just being an idiot?"

"Not that the two are mutually exclusive," Severus noted, "but he wanted me to teach Draco Occlumency."

The Assistant grunted. "Fair enough, I guess. Still." He put the syringe between his teeth and pushed his sleeve up, wiggling his fingers at the tourniquet to make it tie itself around his upper arm, then took the syringe out of his mouth again. "None of my business. I'm not saving Draco, I'm not saving Harry, I'm not saving you. You can sod off now. If you want demons to save Harry, you have to sell your own soul for it."

Severus opened his mouth to argue - though he knew there was nothing he could say to change this man's mind, he was too stubborn - but the chillness of the pendant against his chest suddenly vanished. He slapped a hand over it, feeling the emerald pressed into his breastbone, but it was no warmer or colder than his own skin.

"What's wrong?" the Assistant asked.

"My charms," Severus' voice rasped, "the tracking charms I put on Harry - they're not responding."

The Assistant looked up at him, showing no sympathy, pleasure, or despair. When he spoke, his voice was just as clear of any emotion. "Then he's either dead or they've put him under more protections."

There was no reason to put Harry under more protections. He was already completely trapped, locked in chains that only one person could open. Severus didn't know for certain who that person was, but it was probably Voldemort, who had to know there was no one that could try and rescue him.

Unless he expected the Assistant to try it - but the Assistant claimed Voldemort knew he wasn't part of the wizarding world anymore, and if Voldemort did expect him then he would have put up those extra protections from the beginning.

Which meant…

"I have to go," Severus said, and Disapparated away.

He went home, grabbed a vial of Polyjuice and one of Mulciber's hairs that he still had, but just before he downed it, he happened to glance at the open notebook sitting on his workbench and notice a new message from Draco.

 _He knows about you. He's sending people for you._

A sudden _whoosh_ drew his attention to the window. He looked out onto the street just in time to see the house next door burst into flames - thrown from Bellatrix's wand. She danced in the street, laughing gleefully at the destruction wrought and blasting another fireball at the house on the other side of Severus'. Lucius was there too, staring at the space where Severus' house was. He couldn't see it, but he knew it was there; the fire was probably his idea, intended to force Severus out of his hidden home.

Severus turned back to the notebook.

 **Is Harry dead?**

Draco's reply came almost instantly.

 _No._

That was all Severus needed. He already had a case full of potions and a bag packed to go. He only had to snatch up the notebook, rush downstairs to hurriedly find one particular book on his shelves, and then attempted to Disapparate only to hit Anti-Apparition Spells. Swearing, he shrunk his luggage to fit in his pocket and hurried for the backdoor.

James Potter and Antonin Dolohov stood on the path outside the garden. Like Lucius, James flicked his gaze between the houses neighbouring Severus', both of which were on fire now, but he still seemed unable to see Severus standing in the garden. Unfortunately, the Anti-Apparition Spell stretched this far as well; it probably covered the whole street. If he could get across the playing field beyond the path, he would be free.

Severus cast two curses in quick succession. The first knocked Dolohov off his feet with blood spewing from his chest; the second barely missed Potter. Potter yelled and Severus ran, throwing curses wildly behind him. He was interested in escaping, not defeating them.

A blast sounded behind him. He didn't glance back, but he heard Bellatrix shout something unintelligible and could guess she and Lucius had broken through one of the non-burning houses. It was the only way through from the street; the only other option was going the long way around.

A bolt of green whizzed past his face, close enough to make him jerk aside, staggering. He swore, got steady, tried to Apparate but still wasn't clear of the spells. He continued running, wand aimed over his shoulder and firing blindly.

"If you escape your son will suffer for it, Severus!" Lucius yelled, entirely too close for comfort. Severus gave up firing and focused on running. He was halfway across the field now - it had to be far enough - he tried to Apparate - and it worked.

* * *

Despite his earlier intention of selling someone else's soul for Harry's freedom, Severus didn't go to a crossroads. His first stop was Black Stag House; he was fairly confident no one would look for him there, so he restored the protection spells that had been removed or faded away.

When the house was as secure as he could make it, he transfigured his face, put on a Disillusionment Charm, and Apparated to London. Trying to remember the route he took before, he headed back to the Assistant's residence.

As much as he was willing to give up his soul for his son's life and freedom, if there was a way to save Harry without damning himself then he'd take it. The Assistant was a way, and more over the Assistant owed it to Harry. The man could have done so many things in the past eighteen years to save Harry from pain and misery; it was time someone forced him to do something.

He found the house and slipped inside when the same woman from before came out. The Assistant didn't appear to have moved, slumped on the sofa still, unconscious - or apparently, anyway. Severus was wary of trusting anything about this man.

Two other women were there, one black, one Asian, both barely out of their teens, talking quietly over Indian takeout. Severus watched them impatiently, and almost groaned when the black woman got up and approached the Assistant, shaking his shoulder.

"Toby? We have food, you want some?"

There was no response.

"Is he alive?" the Asian woman asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

"Yeah," the first said, tucking blankets fondly around the Assistant. "Just out cold. He's been hitting the dope pretty hard lately."

"He'll kill himself if he's not careful. What are we supposed to do if he dies? I'm not going back to Jay, I can't do that again."

The black woman went to her, pulling her to her feet and hugging her close. "We're never going back to him. If Toby dies, we run away."

The Asian woman snorted. "We _are_ runaways. Where do runaways runaway to?"

"The circus," the black woman replied instantly. "I'll learn to swallow knives and you can be an acrobat. Ex-gymnast, I'm sure you can do it."

The Asian woman laughed, making the black woman smile. "I haven't done gymnastics since I was twelve."

"It'll come back to you. I know you're still nice and flexible. Let's go up stairs and see just how much."

The Asian woman grinned, kissed her, and then - finally! - they left the room. Severus listened until the sounds of sex were loud, then went to the Assistant. He still appeared dead to the world. Severus would liked to have dosed him with a bit of sleeping potion, just to be sure, but it could too easily react with the Muggle drugs and kill him.

He cautiously took the Assistant's hand, encouraged when there wasn't even a twitch of reaction, and firmed his grip before Apparating him to Black Stag House. Even that didn't draw signs of life. Severus left him slumped on the living room floor as he lit the fire to light the room. The house had electricity laid on, but the payments had obviously lapsed because none of the lights worked.

Able to see better, he fetched a knife and the book he'd taken from his home. He'd searched for a copy after Harry told him about the Animancupium on Potter last summer, just out of curiosity; he'd read a little about it before, but didn't know the details and had been curious as to what exactly Potter was suffering.

Now, it came in use.

He found the page with the transfer ritual, left it lying open on the floor, and took the Assistant's limp hand, cutting the knife across his palm. This, finally got a reaction, though not much of one. The Assistant made a vague noise of protest and twitched, but then fell still again.

Moving quickly, Severus cut his own palm, grasped their bleeding hands together, and read the ritual words from the book as fast as his sketchy Latin would allow. He was uncertain he'd pronounced it all right, but the two ribbons of light appeared, as the book said they would. The one that wrapped around his own wrist was silver and black, the other a dark grey.

The Assistant stirred just as the ribbons glowed brightest. He stared incomprehensively at them for a brief moment, enough time for Severus to put his other hand over the Assistant's, keeping his hand clasped firmly between his own even as understanding dawned and the Assistant attempted to wrench himself free.

"Son of a bitch!"

Severus wasn't sure how long the Assistant had spent drugging himself and living rough, but it was long enough to lose some weight and strength. The Assistant sat up, fingers of his free hand flicking towards Severus and throwing him across the room, but Severus' grip was tight and he managed to keep hold, dragging the Assistant after him halfway before his momentum finally separated them - right after the two ribbons of light had sunk into their arms.

"Bastard," the Assistant swore, but without the vehemence of his last curse. He collapsed back against the floor, groaning. "What'd you do that for?"

Severus picked himself up, wincing. "I need your help."

"Twat."

"Stop insulting me."

The Assistant's mouth twitched, perhaps with a swallowed insult. "Is this where you force me to detox?"

"I don't have time to babysit you through that," Severus said, moving to stand over him. "As long as you can function, I don't care what you drug yourself with."

"Lucky me."

"You needn't wear that collar anymore, either," Severus said. He wasn't sure how he felt yet about having a Slave - he was only interested in saving Harry - but the sight of that collar made him uncomfortable.

The Assistant touched it with two fingers and it fell away from his neck. "Guess I should figure out what to do with him now."

"You can worry about your revenge on Yaxley later. Right now, I want you to save Harry. His chains are Magic Locked, but I assume you have some way around that."

"Sure. Dark Lord got me to spill the beans on slipping out of chains myself so that probably won't work again, but I can just cut his hands off."

" _You will not!_ "

"I'll reattach them," the Assistant said with an eye roll.

"You will _not_ cut my son's hands off," Severus snarled, and the Assistant sighed.

"Fine, fine, I'll bring him with the chains."

"Good." At least with Harry free, Severus could work on removing the protective charms on the chains themselves and then destroy them. "Go to the hospital and get him out. Try not to get caught yourself, but do whatever you have to to get Harry free."

"Yes, Master," the Assistant said with a roll of his eyes, and Disapparated. Despite the heavy sarcasm, it still managed to have an undertone of respect to it.

He'd left his collar on the floor. Severus slashed his wand and it burst into flames, burning away in minutes, though leaving the carpet beneath untouched. He vanished the remaining ashes.

The Assistant was back in under ten minutes, though they seemed to drag on for hours. He also came back alone.

"He's gone," the Assistant said bluntly, dropping onto the sofa and sending up a cloud of dust that vanished with a wave of his hand.

"What do you mean he's gone?" Severus demanded.

"I mean Harry's not there. They've moved him. The Dark Lord is still living there and they had people about, but Harry's gone. Doesn't look like Bella, Toni, or Lucius are living there anymore, either," he added as Severus snarled and kicked the sofa.

"Bellatrix is at Malfoy Manor," Severus snapped, and then froze. Malfoy Manor, which had a cellar for holding people in. Malfoy Manor, where Draco lived, the person who'd told Severus that Harry was still alive.

He grabbed the notebook out of the side pocket of his bag, wrenching it open so hard he almost tore it. There, right underneath that last _no_ :

 _He's here. The Dark Lord said we have to hide him because you'll try to rescue him, and he's making others live here to keep an eye on us – Father, Mr Dolohov, Aunt Bella's husband and his brother. Mother's not happy._

 _Sir?_

 _I don't think I can handle this. I saw them bring him in. He's tied up in chains and he looked half dead. His face is all messed up and they cut out his eyes. I want to help him but I can't. I'm watched everywhere I go._

 _What do I do if the Dark Lord finds out I knew about you before?_

"What's that?" the Assistant asked.

Severus ignored him, digging out a quill and inkpot and hurriedly writing back. The Assistant left the sofa to peer over his shoulder.

 **Do not attempt to save Harry. His chains are Magic Locked; you won't get them off. Avoid the Dark Lord whenever possible. Practice your Occlumency.**

 **Burn this book.**

"Wait," the Assistant said, and took the quill from him.

 _ **If you need to get out, call for Dobby. He'll have orders to rescue you if need be.**_

"Dobby is Lucius' house elf," Severus said, taking the quill back and underlining the command to burn the book. There was no response from Draco, but he might be away from the book - and hiding it if he was sensible.

"Actually I bought him off Narcissa a year ago. Dobby!"

An elf appeared and Severus gaped at it. He was used to the Hogwarts elves in their tea-towel togas, and he'd seen the Malfoy elf - this elf, he realised - dressed in a pillowcase, but he'd never seen a house elf wearing combat army gear.

The elf saluted with all the vigour of a eager soldier, but with only two fingers extended, a formal parody of the Assistant's more casual salute. "Private Dobby reporting for duty, sir!"

The Assistant blinked at him then turned to Severus. "Did I hear that right? He just said Private Dobby, didn't he?"

"Doesn't he normally?" Severus asked, trying to sound less baffled than he really was.

"No. I wondered if the dope was messing with my head." He turned back to the elf, who was still standing to attention. "Dobbs, what's with the soldier impersonation?"

"Private Dobby has been cleaning for Her Majesty's army. Private Dobby is a soldier! Mister Assistant said so."

"What? When?"

"Last time Mister Assistant called, Mister Assistant said 'At ease, soldier'."

The Assistant groaned. "I didn't mean you were an _actual_ soldier, Dobbs. You're not supposed to work around Muggles, you know that. And stop saluting."

Dobby dropped his hand, but still stood with his back and shoulders straight. "Private Dobby is never seen by Muggles. Private Dobby works for Major Duster, a squib."

Dobby peered up at the Assistant, managing to look both pleased with himself and afraid of disapproval. He grinned broadly when the Assistant laughed.

"Fair enough, Dobbs."

"Why is your elf working for someone else?" Severus asked.

"Technically he's not my elf. I set him free, but pay him for occasional work."

Severus arched an eyebrow. "You _pay_ him?"

"I do, and you've got enough to deal with without judging my treatment of house elves, which I might point out is much better than how most wizards treat house elves. Dobbs, I know you're not fond of the Malfoys, but if Draco calls for you, I'd appreciate it if you answered him."

Dobby's ears drooped, his back hunched, and he wrung his hands. "Dobby is to work for his old masters?"

"Just Draco," the Assistant said, sitting on the sofa, resting his elbows on his knees. "You don't even have to be nice to him, and if he treats you badly you can give him a kick in the ankles, but he's in danger. I'll pay you for any work you do for him."

"Dobby will help him if Mister Assistant asks it."

"Thank you. If he wants you to help him leave Malfoy Manor, take him to my cave. Don't bring him here."

"Yes, Mister Assistant, sir."

The Assistant gave him a grateful smile. "You can return to Major Duster now."

"Wait," Severus said before the elf could vanish. "You, elf, can you -"

"Dobby," the Assistant interrupted. "His name is Dobby and if you intend to ask for his help then you can treat him with the respect that warrants. I'm your Slave, not him."

Dobby's huge eyes swivelled up to Severus with a look of hatred. "Mister Assistant's master?"

"It's not Preston, Dobbs." The Assistant sat back and gestured at Severus. "This is Severus Snape, my new master." He looked down at the carpet. "Where is Preston?"

"How should I know?" Severus replied.

The Assistant mouth twitch with a faint smile. "Sev, what did you do with the collar?"

"I burned it. Why?" he drawled. "Attached to it, were you?"

"In a sense. That _was_ Preston. I'd have liked to kill him myself, but nevermind. What were you going to ask Dobby?"

Severus was now even more glad he'd burnt the collar. He hoped Yaxley felt every flicker of flame.

He turned back to the elf. "Elf magic is different to wizard magic, isn't it?"

"Yes," Dobby answered warily. Severus wasn't sure if it was personal dislike or an unwillingness to talk about his species' magic.

"Do you know what a Magic Lock is? Are you capable of bypassing them?" Severus asked when Dobby nodded.

"No, sir, Dobby cannots."

It was a slim hope anyway. Severus turned away, rubbing both hands over his face.

"Still think you should cut his hands off," the Assistant muttered, then dismissed Dobby and said more sympathetically, "He's still saveable, Sev. I can get into Malfoy Manor."

Severus turned to him. "You can get to the Dark Lord, too."

"I might," the Assistant said slowly. "He's paranoid about me, even after I told him I was dropping out of the war. It's not easy to get close to him."

"You just broke into his headquarters," Severus pointed out, voice hardening. He would not be impressed if that earlier sojourn hadn't actually been an attempt to save Harry.

"His base, yes, but the Dark Lord isn't his base. What do you expect me to do, Sev?"

"Don't call me that. I want you to kill him."

The Assistant sighed, head falling back and eyes closing. The firelight danced over his skin, sharpening his cheekbones and highlighting the weight he'd lost since Severus last saw him.

"No, you don't."

Severus stalked over and bent, grabbing the Assistant's chin in hand and shaking him until he opened his eyes and looked up. "I don't care what excuses you have about not interfering with timelines or some twisted desire to want the Dark Lord alive, I am ordering you to kill him - and destroy the Horcruxes, too."

"You know about them?"

"You'll destroy them and kill the Dark Lord once and for all. Harry will be free and the world safe."

"No, Severus," the Assistant said softly. "Harry will be dead, because he _is_ one of the Dark Lord's Horcruxes."

* * *

Draco knew that trying to save Harry was stupid. Both his parents warned him against it and Voldemort personally told him not to.

But Draco had to see him at least. He'd watched from a window as Harry was levitated down the driveway, able to see the scar mangling his unconscious face but little else. Harry was transported straight to the cellar - Lucius' cellar - and chained in the secret room, and Voldemort stayed with him. Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange were ordered to keep an eye on Draco and Narcissa while others went to attack Snape's home, but the attack team returned empty handed and with Antonin Dolohov dead.

Voldemort punished them, but then he left the house. The Lestrange brothers were charged with guarding Harry and maintaining watch over Draco, but Draco had been taking a mild sleeping potion lately, unable to sleep for fear and worry. He ordered the house elf to sneak some into drinks for the brothers once everyone was asleep, then snuck out his room and down to the cellar. His father's blood-linked charms had been removed and Voldemort was relying on the chains to keep Harry restrained; the door hadn't been difficult to bypass.

Draco had only wanted to see him, to reassure himself that Harry was alive and it hadn't been a puppet or corpse brought into his home, to maybe bring Harry some comfort and convince himself that Harry could escape.

But the sight of him had been sickening - the sunken cheeks, the mutilated face, the twisted and discoloured hands. The way Harry whimpered with fear at the sound of Draco's footsteps and twitched away when Draco gently stroked his hair with a trembling hand. He wore a thin, over-sized grey robe, but it was bunched up around his legs to reveal partially healed cuts on his calves and shins, runes that Draco was too distressed to translate.

"It's me," he whispered, voice cracking, unable to keep himself from crying. "Harry, it's me, it's Draco."

There was no response. Draco knew Harry was awake and aware of him because Harry's breathing had turned to terrified little gasps, but Draco's words seemed to bring no comfort.

"I'm going to get you out," he'd said, voice little more than a breath of air, glancing around the dark empty room. "I'll get you out, I promise. I won't leave you here."

He paused, looking around again, terrified but more so of leaving that room without Harry, and drew his wand. He tried spells on the chains, everything he knew that might unlock or destroy them, and wasn't hugely surprised when it didn't work. Choking down a sob, he punched the floor. Harry twitched and whimpered again.

"No, no, Harry, it's okay, I won't hurt you, I'll never hurt you. I just need to… to figure out… _fuck!_ "

Draco bent over, resting his forehead lightly on Harry's head, squeezing his eyes shut but feeling tears drip through anyway.

"Dra…co…"

He jerked up, gasping, but the movement was too abrupt. Harry flinched and even when Draco reassured him again there was no response.

"I'm sorry," he said eventually, stroking Harry's greasy hair but keeping his hands away from anyway else. "I'm sorry, Harry, but I will get you out, I promise. I'll find a potion or something to corrode through the chain and I'll come back and then we'll both escape and find Professor Snape and get away to somewhere safe."

"Do you mean," a voice said behind him, sending a freezing terror through Draco that locked him in place, "that you know where the traitor is?"

After that, most of what Draco knew was pain.

* * *

Severus woke up the next morning with a hangover to kill the gods and the strange feeling that no time had actually passed. He was sprawled on the sofa and across from him the Assistant was sitting on a mattress sticking a needle into his arm, which was the last thing Severus recalled seeing before he passed out the night before.

But there was light streaming through the windows. He hadn't shut the curtains and a beam had struck Severus across the face, the thing that woke him up. He sat up, taking his pounding head out of the light and closing his eyes as the room spun about him, and an empty vodka bottle dropped to the floor. It was the first time he'd drank since Harry was taken, but finding out his son was possessed by several fractured pieces of Lord Voldemort's soul was reason enough to have a drink.

At a pleased sigh across the room, Severus forced his eyes open and squinted across at the Assistant as he tugged the needle free of his arm. The sight of him made Severus feel suddenly sick with self-disgust. Despite six weeks sobriety, he'd convinced himself that the drinking he'd done in recent months was nothing to be concerned about. He'd been bored and alone, very nearly a prisoner in his own home; it was no wonder he'd drunk, it was nothing to be concerned about.

But waking up with an empty bottle and a killer headache in a house where he was squatting, a drug addict shooting up like a pathetic Muggle across from him - it was enough to make him swear off drink for good.

He fumbled for his wand, found it tucked between the sofa cushions, and flicked it to shut the curtains, then threw a mild Stinging Hex at the Assistant, who opened his eyes to glare blearily at him.

"What was that for?"

"You functional?"

"If I must be."

"Go find me a Hangover Reliever."

The Assistant grunted. "You didn't take long to get used to this whole Slave business," he said, but there was no resentment or anger in his voice. It was merely an observation, and then he got to his feet and Disapparated.

Severus settled back against the sofa, closing his eyes and trying not to move or think. The latter was easy, but even the slight shifting of breathing seemed to rattle his brain inside his skull and make him feel like he was on a ship in choppy waters.

He didn't hear the Assistant return, but he smelt the coffee. He opened his eyes to find the Assistant holding a vial of familiar potion and a cardboard tray with two steaming takeaway cups, a folded newspaper under his arm and a worried expression on his face.

"Drink that and read this," he said, passing Severus the potion and tossing the paper on his lap. Severus instantly gulped down the potion and it was a good job he did because when he saw the headline he dropped the vial.

HARRY EVANS TO BE EXECUTED

 _Harry Evans, murderer of former Hogwarts Headmaster and Supreme Mugwump Albus Dumbledore, is set to be executed in five days time, at noon on 31st July._

Severus threw it down without reading the rest and took one of the coffee cups from the Assistant, but didn't drink, instead pinching the bridge of his nose and sighing heavily.

The Assistant retreated to his mattress and sipped from the second cup. "What do you want to do?"

"Save Harry still. Tonight. You can get us into Malfoy Manor?"

"Yes. Can I make a suggestion?"

"What?"

"Do it at the execution. I think we have a better chance," he added quickly when Severus stared at him incredulously. "Malfoy Manor is going to be swamped in protective spells and enchantments, and a trap waiting to happen. The Dark Lord probably expects you to make a rescue attempt tonight - last ditch effort before the execution."

"He'll expect one at the execution, too," Severus pointed out.

"Yes, but Hogsmeade is open ground. It's not a highly fortified manor house. I can take out the executioner then I can focus on the Dark Lord. I can make him release Harry from his chains, but I'd be open while I did. I'd need you to watch my back."

"Why?"

"I'm not casting the Imperius Curse with this; it'd be useless, the Imperius Curse is all about will power and my skills with magic don't change that. What I can do is change the very decisions in someone's mind, but releasing Harry is deeply against the Dark Lord's nature. If I was making him kill a Muggle, I could easily do it, but for something this complex, I need skin contact and time."

Severus frowned. "How much time?"

"Thirty seconds, at least. A minute maybe."

It didn't sound like long, but when you were fighting Death Eaters and risking lives it was an eternity.

He shook his head. "We go tonight. The execution is too risky."

The Assistant shrugged. "As you like."

* * *

Malfoy Manor was locked up tighter than a Gringott's Vault.

That afternoon, Severus and the Assistant stood half a mile back from it, leant against some trees, Severus with his arms crossed and scowling at the grey house in the distance. There was no sneaking into here; Polyjuice Potions and transfigured disguises wouldn't pass muster. There were too many enchantments and guards on the house.

"Can you remove those enchantments?" Severus asked, gaze not leaving the house. He could probably do it himself, if he had a month and no risk of getting caught.

"Not without alerting everyone inside," the Assistant said. "They'd be on us before I could finish. If you scowl any harder it'll get stuck like that."

Severus turned a dark stare on him. "How about instead of making smart arsed comments you come up with a way to get Harry out of there."

"I can do both at the same time."

"So you have a way?" Severus sneered.

The Assistant looked to the house. "Not fond of it, but yes."

"Why aren't you fond of it?"

"Because I don't like sending house elves into dangerous situations."

"House elves," Severus repeated dryly.

"Yes." He waved a hand at the house. "We can't get past that alone without being noticed, but house elves can. They won't have protected against them."

"How do you know that?"

"You didn't," the Assistant pointed out. "Very few people ever do. They're slaves. People forget slaves have minds of our own."

Severus raised an eyebrow at the personal pronoun, but didn't comment on it. "We'll need a distraction. We can't go in there while the Dark Lord's there."

"You're in luck, because distractions are my speciality."

Severus snorted at his grin, but he believed it. The Assistant was very good at making himself heard.

* * *

That evening, Severus was back, this time with Dobby for company instead of the Assistant. Severus felt completely ridiculous accompanied by a house-elf in army fatigues, but the elf refused to change, and Severus had eventually given up trying. He had more important things to worry about.

He hadn't asked what the Assistant planned to do for his diversion, but he knew when it worked. An extremely nervous young Death Eater turned up at Malfoy Manor just as the sun was setting; five minutes later, several Death Eaters came rushing out and Apparated away, and Voldemort soon followed.

"Now," Severus hissed to Dobby, holding out his hand. The elf took it and Severus was surprised at how smooth it felt. He'd have guessed a house elf's skin felt more leathery, like Severus' great-grandmother had before she'd died.

House elf travel felt different to normal Apparition and, Severus had to admit, more pleasant. There's was hardly any sensation, just a slight tug on his hand as the world disappeared as though he blinked, and he couldn't stop himself taking a step forwards when they reappeared.

They were in Lucius' cellar, or so Severus assumed. He'd never been down there, but there was no other windowless room in Malfoy Manor that Harry would be held in.

To Severus' surprise, Harry was dressed and appeared in better condition than he had two days ago. His broken hands were much less swollen, showing signs of being healed far beyond what Severus had done, and there were no fresh wounds or bruises that he could see.

Severus knelt by him. Harry was completely unresponsive, not even twitching or whimpering when Severus touched his hair lightly. If not for the soft, shallow breaths, Severus would have thought him dead.

There was a pained whine behind him, long and low, followed by a sob. Severus didn't look around.

"Get a hold of yourself, elf." He tried to speak sharply, but heard the despair in his own voice. "You're meant to help me, so fetch Draco and get back here."

Dobby sobbed and sniffed, but vanished with a crack as Severus moved to the wall. Like in the hospital, Harry's heavy metal collar was chained, and all the same charms were on it to keep the chains and shackles from being damaged or removed. The wall itself, however, was free of any enchantments. It was an aspect he'd been too distressed to consider last time.

Severus cut a square around the point where the chain met the wall. It wasn't easy; there might not be specific protections against this, but every wall in the house would have been enchanted for durability when the house was first built, charms that the Malfoys would have kept up to date over the centuries.

Dobby reappeared with Draco just as Severus levitated the block free of the wall, carefully floating it over to settle down beside Harry. There was still no response from him. Severus wished he would at least whimper, to give some indication that he was cognizant of the world around him.

Draco was for more alert. He was pale and trembling, whole body shaking in a way Severus recognised as over-exposure to the Cruciatus Curse. If it was that bad, there was probably some mental damage despite Draco's apparent alertness; it wouldn't take much more to completely break him.

Draco knelt on the floor, looking up at Severus with wide, fearful eyes. "P-p-prof-!"

"Draco -"

"A _house elf_."

Severus sometimes feared, as he got older, that his reactions would slow. He'd honed it to an art during his teenage years and young adulthood; there was nothing like schoolyard bullying and torturous overlords to inspire someone to perfect their self-defence. During that decade after Voldemort's fall, and in the past year, Severus practised when he could, but worried the duties of teaching daily and living in hiding would leave him rusty.

It didn't. Even before the last word sounded, he had his wand up and a curse spilling out the end, a thin jet of sea green bolting towards the tall, thin figure in the corner.

Voldemort deflected it. Severus surged to his feet, throwing up a shield against Voldemort's retaliating curse.

" _Go!_ " he roared, gaze never leaving the man before him, relying on Dobby's fear and instinct to obey.

"NO!" Voldemort yelled, pointing his wand past Severus, but a loud crack echoed through the cellar. It took one damning second for Severus to realise he'd been left behind, and in that instance he couldn't help looking around, searching for Dobby, for Harry, for Draco, and finding none of them.

He felt one brief flicker of relief - Harry was safe - and then his spine twisted. His legs crumpled, his hand spasmed, his wand clattered to the floor. He collapsed, gasping and twitching as he tried to straighten up, to turn his spine out of the unnatural and agonising position it twisted into.

Soft footsteps paced by him. "You'll pay for this, Severus." Despite the calm, quiet voice, the words rang with fury. "I knew you would come. I did not expect you to enlist the aid of such base creatures as house elves, but I knew you would make some attempt to rescue your son. I learn from my mistakes, you see. Last time, I wanted to believe your loyalty to me was greater than whatever shallow feelings you might have for young Harry. You proved me wrong, and I am not to be made a fool of twice."

Severus couldn't answer, but his head twisted against his will to look up, turning in an effort to ease the growing tension in his spine. Voldemort stared down at him, just as cold and emotionless as he always was, just as capable of turning Severus' insides to jelly with only a look.

Voldemort jabbed his wand. Severus whined, arms twisting, curling his body into even more grotesque shapes.

"The elf may have taken Harry from me, but I will get him back. I _must_ get him back. The elf cannot remove those shackles. In the meantime, you will suffer my displeasure. Rest assured, my dear Severus, that there will be no quick or false death for you this time."


	53. Chapter 53

**Chapter 53**

Narcissa was fanciful, in a practical sort of way. She was prone to imagining all sorts of highly unlikely scenarios, some of which sent her into spiralling waves of depression and anxiety when she was younger. Throughout her pregnancy and then after Draco was born, she imagined all manner of disasters that might befall her son, from entirely plausible accidents to preposterous plots enacted by Muggle secret societies intent on wiping out the wizarding nobility.

As she got older, she trained herself to acknowledge the implausible from the likely, and to not let herself get worked up over the implausible. For the likely, she eased the anxiety by coming up with counterplans. For every potential disaster that might befall her and her family—whether it was losing the good china right before a dinner party, or ending up the top target of the Aurors and Hit Wizards—she came up with a plan to prevent it or deal with it.

The idea that Voldemort would turn on her and her family was entirely too plausible, so it was something she'd imagined a lot, especially after the Dark Lord forced his way into her home, placing a tortured child in her cellar and setting up her own sister, her in-laws, and her ex-husband and his thrice-damned pet as house mates.

As she ignored Lucius, as she pretended not to mind Bellatrix's lovers coming and going, as she tried to comfort Draco, she imagined scenario after scenario that required her and Draco to flee. She made plans for what they could take in the heat of the moment (wands and the clothes on their back) and how they'd get out (the kitchen, where her and Lucius' rarely used brooms were kept).

She imagined fighting her way out. She planned spells to use against Bellatrix's lovers, against the Lestrange brothers, against Lucius and Bellatrix herself. She imagined how she'd handle it if Draco was injured and she had to carry him out, what she'd do if her love-struck son insisted they try to rescue Harry as well, how she'd fare if she had to face Voldemort himself.

She imagined what it was like to kill.

It was, in reality, a lot easier than she expected. She'd thought that murdering her own sister would be heart-wrenching and nearly impossible, but when Bellatrix stood between Narcissa and Draco, killing her was the easiest thing in the world.

Since Draco's failed attempt to rescue Harry, Narcissa had been locked in her room. Pippin the house elf brought her meals, and a guard was stationed outside her bedroom at all times. She knew Lucius was enduring the same treatment in his own room, with Potter. Voldemort had learnt not to underestimate what parents would do for their children.

Her room wasn't soundproofed, an intentional torture for her so she could hear Draco scream, which meant she heard the commotion the night after Draco's rescue attempt. Someone screamed—too distant and the wrong pitch to be Draco—and the far sound of a lot of running footsteps. After, there was a short silence until closer footsteps approached her room.

"What's going on?"

That was Bellatrix, Narcissa's guard for the night. The answering voice was Rabastan's.

"The Assistant's making a show of himself in Hogsmeade. No, stay," Rabastan added curtly. He was always short with Bellatrix; he took more offence at her sleeping with others while still technically married than Rodolphus did. "The Dark Lord wants us to stay. He thinks it's a distraction by Snape."

Bellatrix made an ugly snorting sound. "Snape's a fool if he thinks he can get in here."

Narcissa imagined Rabastan shrugged or otherwise responded in silence, because his next words were, "Stay on your sister. We don't want her making a break for it while the house is almost empty."

Narcissa smiled. It was kind of him to let her know the place was so quiet, because making a break for it was exactly what she planned to do. If Voldemort expected Snape to come here, he would be in the cellar, with Harry, because that's where Snape would go.

That suited Narcissa just fine. The kitchen was on the other side of the house, and there was a servant's staircase that would take her to it far quicker than the main route. It made her glad for the brief fashion of having human servants instead of house elves some four hundred years ago.

It would be good to know who else was left inside the house, but she couldn't have everything. This was likely her only chance to save Draco. She knew the Dark Lord had no intention of executing Harry Evans in five days' time; he was too obsessed with experimenting on him to discover how his unusual magic worked. He intended to Polyjuice Draco in Harry's place, instead, and execute him.

She already wore her most practical robes—another product of imagining and planning for every disaster—but she didn't have her wand. She wasn't even permitted to summon Pippin; the Dark Lord had discovered that Draco used her to drug the Lestranges so he could get to Harry. Narcissa had nothing but her own cunning and determination to see this through.

It would be enough.

She wanted to wait a little awhile, to give it some time so Bellatrix wouldn't grow suspicious at her calling for assistance right after Rabastan spoke to her, but she couldn't risk the wait. If this was a rescue attempt by Snape, Narcissa only had as long as he was here and he would be working fast. She knew he would because they were both after the same thing—saving their children.

She palmed a nail file from her vanity and went to the door, knocking briskly. "Could I have a nightcap, please?"

A moment passed, then the lock clicked and the door pushed open. Bellatrix entered with a smile of false sympathy; she feigned empathetic emotions, but in truth she understood nothing. Lord Voldemort was the centre of her universe and she didn't understand how someone could be more loyal to anyone else, even their own blood. If the Dark Lord asked it, Bellatrix wouldn't hesitate to murder Narcissa.

So Narcissa didn't hesitate either. She loved her sister, insane as she was, but she loved her son more.

Bellatrix had just enough time to say, "Don't tr-" and then Narcissa thrust the nail file into her throat. There was more resistance than she expected and the sudden rush of blood over her hands almost made her lose her grip, but she clenched her fist until it hurt and drove the file deeper.

Bellatrix staggered. Narcissa followed her down to the floor, kneeling over her sister as she sprawled. Bellatrix clawed weakly at Narcissa's hand, fingers slicking through blood. Her dark eyes were wide, staring up at Narcissa in shock, but they shuttered as Narcissa withdrew the file.

Bellatrix breathed wetly, blood bubbling past her lips and out the wound on her throat. Her eyelids fluttered, opened just enough for her pupils to focus on Narcissa, and the shock was gone. Now, her gaze was just hateful.

"Trai…tor…"

"There's nothing treacherous in saving my son," Narcissa said softly, but Bellatrix had already gone limp and still, and even the blood flowing from her neck began to slow.

Narcissa's final grace to her sister was to close her eyes, leaving two bloody smears over her lids.

There was a crash. " _No!_ "

She snapped her head up. Antonin Dolohov stood outside the room, a broken mug of coffee at his feet, his eyes wide and horrified as he stared at Bellatrix. Bellatrix had toyed with him, promising her heart to him even as she shared her body with others, and everyone knew her soul belonged to Voldemort, but Dolohov kept coming back, too in love with her to let go.

His gaze lifted from Bellatrix's slack face to Narcissa's set one, absolute hatred flashed in his gaze, and then they both moved. Narcissa didn't know where her own wand was kept, but she reached for Bellatrix's—

—too slow. Dolohov already had his out and swinging up by the time Narcissa got her hands on Bellatrix's wand, the tip glowing green, she'd never get out of the way in time—

The green brightened, faded, and then Dolohov was gone. Footsteps sounded and only when Lucius appeared in the doorway did Narcissa realise what had happened. His hair was loose and his eyes wild, and for a moment Narcissa regretted divorcing him. The fear in his face, swiftly followed by intense relief when he saw her, showed just as much love as the distress on Dolohov's had.

"Narcissa," he breathed. "Thank God. Let's go."

The moment of regret passed, and she snatched Bellatrix's wand and rose. In the hall, Potter stood with a wand in his own hand, Rabastan's prone body at his feet. A part of Narcissa instinctively wanted to object to his presence, to tell Lucius to leave the man here, uncaring of what punishment Potter would suffer, but she ignored the urge. She didn't have time to worry about Potter.

Without a word to either man, she hurried in the direction of Draco's room. Rodolphus was outside it, standing with his wand in hand and facing their direction. He must have heard the commotion, but decided obeying the order to stay with Draco was more important than investigating.

His wand came straight up, but Narcissa and Lucius was already firing. Blue and red lights hit Rodolphus, knocking him off his feet, bones protruding from his knees, feet, and elbows, and black tar bubbling out of every orifice.

Narcissa didn't stopped moving until she reached Draco's door. Behind her, Lucius cursed under his breath as she dismantled the protections and undid the locking charms.

"You're not helping, Lucius!"

He growled irritably, but stepped back, pacing behind her instead. It seemed to take an age to get through the spells, but finally they unlocked and fell away. With a cry of triumph she twisted the handle and pushed the door open, bracing herself for what she'd find inside. She'd seen Harry only once, but it was enough to horrify. No one deserved that, and her only comfort was that Draco hadn't been tortured long enough to reach that state yet.

But whatever state he was in, she couldn't know, because his room was empty.

* * *

The Assistant had several possible distraction plans, but there was only one thing guaranteed to get Voldemort himself to come out, even in the current climate—his Horcruxes.

He considered holding an auction—for fakes of the Hogwarts' Founders objects, of course; he'd never sell the real Horcruxes—but that would require putting the news out beforehand and he didn't want to give Voldemort time to get suspicious. Voldemort was smart, but he had a short temper and didn't think so clearly when he was angry.

So at sundown he waltzed into the Three Broomsticks, bought drinks for everyone, and started bragging about his recent discovery of objects belonging to the founders of Hogwarts. It didn't take long to draw a crowd, sceptics and those looking for a free drink and those looking for an interesting story to pass the time.

The crowd grew larger when he drew out a copy of the four founders' objects, and the Assistant recognised a few Death Eaters in the crowd. He hid a smile when he saw one slip off, and flicked his fingers at the latest shot of vodka someone pushed at him, turning it to water. He knew better than to drink when he was using heroin.

But Voldemort never came. A couple of other Death Eaters turned up, but there was no attack like the Assistant expected.

Something had gone wrong.

He was just debating the best way to handle it when pain suddenly shot down his spine. He dropped his shot glass and twisted, gasping.

"What's up, mate?" Rosmerta asked concernedly. As long as he kept the pub busy, she was his best friend.

"I have to go," the Assistant gasped, forcing himself to straighten up. The pain wasn't his—it was Snape's, echoing down the Bond so the Assistant felt it. At the degree the Assistant felt it, it had to be agonising for Severus.

He staggered outside, but then a wave of pain crashed through him and he fell against the side of the pub, choking down as scream as tremors ran through him. The Cruciatus Curse. Once upon a time it depressed him that he recognised it so easily, but he'd long got over that.

He grit his teeth, forced himself to ignore the pain, and staggered a little further on before Apparating away. He reappeared in Black Stag House, though everything in him was telling him to go to Malfoy Manor. To his Master.

But he knew better. If Severus was under torture, the rescue had failed and protections on Malfoy Manor would be even stronger. Voldemort would know that the Assistant was involved by now and he'd be prepared for it. The Assistant wasn't ready to throw himself to the wolves just yet.

He knew he'd made the right decision when he arrived to find Dobby in the living room, Harry on the floor still wrapped in chains, and Draco knelt beside him. Draco looked much the worse for wear, but not half as bad as Harry did.

So it hadn't been a complete failure, and the Assistant could rescue Severus now, he knew. With Harry's power and his own brains, there was nothing he couldn't do, he believed that.

"Mister Assistant!"

The Assistant fell against the wall and slid down it, trembling. "Dobby," he greeted shakily. "Dobby, I need you to find Kirith Karpel and Poppy Pomfrey. Tell them whatever you need to, but get them both here."

"Mister Assistant, what hap-"

" _Go_."

Dobby vanished.

Draco coughed, cleared his throat, asked in a rasping voice, "What is going on? Dobby just turned up and…"

"Rescue mission," the Assistant said weakly, flicking his hand to conjure his drug gear from thin air. Nothing like the ether of non-existence for a hiding place. "Didn't go quite as planned, but you're here and alive so be grateful. _Fuck!_ "

He dropped his needle, hands spasming with a sudden shock of pain. Severus' hands were broken.

"What's wrong with you?" Draco asked. He didn't sound much better than the Assistant.

"Nothing for you to worry about."

Whether Draco agreed, or just didn't have the energy, he didn't respond. The Assistant bore through the pain and forced his trembling hands to cook the heroin and fill the needle.

He almost had it done when two things happened almost simultaneously: Dobby reappeared with Kirith Karpel and Poppy Pomfrey, both women carrying medi-kits; and the front door burst open, and James and Narcissa fell through it.

"Mother!"

"What on earth!"

The Assistant sighed. He really did not want to deal with this shit right now, but Poppy and Kirith were both aiming wands at Narcissa and James, who held up their own, and Draco was trying to stand when he clearly couldn't, and Harry was starting to shake, and Dobby just stared wide-eyed at everyone, and the Assistant was the only one with any sense in the whole bloody place.

He was also at the end of his patience. He twitched his fingers and Narcissa and James collapsed, unconscious. Over Draco's cry of objection, he ordered, "Treat the boys, Healers. Dobby, if you wouldn't mind, stick around and help out wherever it's needed. Draco, your mother's fine, let them heal you. Explanations for everyone will come later."

Then he stuck the needle in his arm, pressed the plunger, and sank into oblivion.

* * *

Draco sat on a chair in the living room, feet tucked under him and a blanket over his lap, still shaking and aching slightly but feeling better than he did an hour ago. He wanted to be upstairs with Harry, but there was nothing he could do for him, not even comfort him. Harry was still unconscious and Healer Karpel had done everything she could to help him, which wasn't much.

So now Draco and all the adults were collected in the living room, getting the full story of what happened tonight. Dobby had related the rescue plan, both Severus and the Assistant's part in it; the Assistant himself was still too out of it to explain, but he seemed better by the time Dobby finished. Cognizant and in less pain.

"That explains the children," Madam Pomfrey said when Dobby was finished, "and I'm very glad they're safe now, but how did you two come to be here?"

The question was aimed at Narcissa and James, both of whom Pomfrey and Healer Karpel remained obviously suspicious of. Draco was offended on his mother's behalf, but could understand the suspicion of James. All through Dobby's explanation Draco just wanted to know what happened with his parents, why his mother was here with James, and why his father wasn't.

But he hadn't asked, because as much as he wanted to know the answer he was afraid of it.

Before Narcissa or James could answer Pomfrey's question, James suddenly cried out, whole body jerking. Draco started, still on edge after being subject to the Dark Lord's torture, and everyone else stared at him. Only Healer Karpel moved to approach James, leaving the sofa she shared with Pomfrey.

"James—"

"You can't help him," the Assistant said. He was huddled on the floor, on a mattress pressed up to the wall.

"I'm a healer," Karpel said, not hesitating. "I don't ignore people in pain."

"You're not listening to me. You _can't_ help him. Lucius is the one being tortured; James is just feeling it through the Bond."

"How do you know my father is being tortured?" Draco demanded.

"Because James is in pain. Plus, logic. He and Narcissa are here, Lucius isn't. Safe bet they tried to escape after you, but Luci didn't make it."

"He's right," Narcissa said. She was perched on the arm of Draco's chair; her hand hadn't left his shoulder since they sat, and it squeezed him now. "We came for you, Draco. I was—terrified—when we found your room empty. I thought only a few people were left in the house, but suddenly there were dozens. Lucius fought them and held them off so I could escape."

James made a pained noise. "He made me go," he said, voice strained, distressed. He drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around his legs, trembling. "I should've stayed and fought with him, but he ordered me to go."

He sounded as upset as Draco had felt when he saw Harry in the cellar.

"He ordered you to protect me," Narcissa said quietly. Draco knew she hated that Lucius Bound James to him; when Voldemort moved them into the Manor, Narcissa treated James as if he didn't exist. He could only imagine the conflict she felt at having to deal with him being forced to help her.

"Of course he did," the Assistant said bluntly. "He loves you." He grimaced and shifted. "When I'm feeling better, I'll try to include him in my rescue."

Pomfrey jerked forward on her seat. "Rescue? You can't be thinking of trying to get back into that place for Severus!"

The Assistant glared at her balefully. "I respect you, Poppy, but you don't know everything. I have to save Severus, and I want to save Lucius. I just need a plan that'll get me back in the Manor."

"You'll be killed," Karpel said. She'd cast a few spells on James, but now returned to her seat beside Pomfrey. "It sounds as if the house elf here barely got Harry and Draco out. I imagine they'll be on guard for any further… incursions."

The Assistant shrugged. "I have to get Severus out."

It was a simple statement of fact, somehow more determined than if he'd said it firmly and emotionally.

"Dobby will help!"

Draco looked to the footstool Dobby was perched on. He still marvelled at the strange clothes he was wearing—something Muggle, obviously, but beyond that Draco had no idea what they were—and he had to keep himself from telling the elf to go change and punish himself for daring to wear clothes.

Dobby perked up, lifting a hand to his head in a salute. Everyone stared at him, but only the Assistant didn't look baffled by the elf. He smiled kindly at him.

"Thank you, Dobby, but no. I put you in danger once already; I won't do it again. Severus is my responsibility; I'll save him."

"And my Master," James said. He was still trembling and looked in pain, but his gaze was pleading and determined as it fixed on the Assistant. "Save my Master too, please."

The Assistant nodded. "I'll do my best."

Karpel shook her head. "I have enough to worry about, so I can only wish you the best of luck. And thank you for saving Harry from execution. Whatever he's done, he doesn't deserve what's happened to him. No one deserves that."

"They weren't going to."

A heavy silence fell in the room. Draco saw the Assistant, Karpel, and Pomfrey turned confused gazes on James, but his mother turned her head away, and Draco looked down at the blanket covering his lap.

"Weren't going to what?" Pomfrey asked.

James stared at his knees. "Execute Harry. Something changed. The Dark Lord wanted to keep him alive, he wouldn't even let anyone hurt him anymore, and he never planned to execute him. He was going to disguise Draco as Harry and execute Draco."

From the corner of his eye, Draco saw the healers look towards him. He didn't lift his gaze.

"Is this true?" Pomfrey's voice was shocked.

Draco nodded. His mother's arm slid around his shoulders and she bent to kiss his hair.

"You're alive. You're safe, my darling."

He leant into her. He'd long considered himself too old for public affection with his parents, but right now he didn't care who saw him. He needed his mother's comfort.

" _Yes_."

Draco looked up, fixing an incredulous stare on the Assistant. He was grinning, a strangely vicious yet pleased grin.

Narcissa's hand slipped from Draco's shoulders and her wand slipped from her sleeve. "You think my son deserves to die in Harry Evans' place?"

The Assistant's grin broadened, looking manic. "No, but I know the Dark Lord. If he planned to fake Harry's execution, he still will, and chances are he'll use Severus to do it. Saving Severus at an execution will be much easier than trying to break into the manor."

Madam Pomfrey looked doubtful. "What makes you so sure You Know Who won't kill Severus before Thursday?"

"Because he's already announced it. Cancelling the execution would be all but admitting that he let Harry get away." He shook his head. "No, the Dark Lord will hold an execution on Thursday, and Severus is the perfect person to disguise as Harry."

"What about my Master?" James asked. "We—I—can't let him die."

The Assistant gave him a sympathetic look. "I'll do what I can for him."

"What about Harry?" Draco asked. "If we don't get those chains off him, he'll die anyway."

The Assistant gave that manic grin again. "Oh, don't worry, I have a plan for that."

* * *

On the day Voldemort took over Hogwarts, Hermione, along with every other Muggleborn student, had her wand taken from her and snapped and was then given a portkey that took her straight home. All of them were told that if they attempted to return to Hogwarts, if they were seen in Hogsmeade or Diagon Alley, if they ventured to the Ministry of Magic, they would be arrested on the spot—or killed.

None of them fought, not after the first little second year who'd clutched his wand and begged to take it home with him, and was killed without warning.

Explaining things to her parents hadn't been easy. They hadn't even been home when she arrived, out on their weekly date night. She'd had an hour to sit on the sofa, shaking and trying to calm down from what happened, but the moment her parents had come through the front door, happy and laughing, she'd burst into tears. It'd taken a while to explain why she was home and what had happened to Hogwarts, what happened to her friends, to Harry.

The thought of Harry still brought tears to her eyes—tears of anger and betrayal as much as regret and sorrow. When Voldemort had told the school that Harry murdered Dumbledore, she'd felt a brief, instant burst of anger because Harry was one of her best friends and she didn't want to think of him as a murderer, but even before she saw the truth in her teachers' eyes she knew that her feelings were nothing more than defensive denial. She'd known without knowing why that Harry had killed Dumbledore.

For a week after leaving Hogwarts the _Daily Prophet_ still arrived every morning, but then it had stopped abruptly with no reason why. She had a year's subscription but that didn't run out until the end of August. She could only assume that the newspaper had been ordered to cancel all subscriptions to Muggleborns.

She still got information from Neville, who was happy to pass on his own copy of the newspaper every day. He even, sweetheart that he was, offered to buy a second wand and send it to her, but she told him not to. With Voldemort in control, there was a chance that all new wands were being sold with tracking charms that would determine if they were used by unauthorised individuals. She wasn't absolutely certain there were charms that clever, and the thought left her itching for the Hogwarts library so she could find out, but the possibility was too high to risk it.

For a couple of weeks, she let herself pretend it was the summer holiday already. Despite the dark news arriving daily, she didn't think too much about the fact that she was exiled from a world she considered her own since she was eleven years old, or that come September she wouldn't be able to return to the school she loved.

She'd always loved books and learning, but she'd been too much of an outcast to actually love school itself, always picked on as the nerd with the oversized teeth and wild hair. Before she found out she was a witch, she'd had some small hopes that secondary school would be better than primary school, but not much because she'd heard the way her cousins complained about it and eavesdropped as they gossiped nastily about their fellow students.

Then she'd found out she was magic and she'd thought, _This is a place where I can fit in!_ She had been so excited to arrive at the castle and get sorted into Gryffindor; she was determined to live up to the values of her house and she'd tried harder than ever to be social with her classmates, but they'd only called her bossy and a swot and ugly. If they didn't hate her for her blood, they resented her for her skill.

And then there was Harry, saving her from a troll. She'd crushed on him afterwards, envisioning him as her knight in stolen clothes who'd see past her bushy hair and big teeth and find her beautiful, something that made her cringe when she thought about it now. Even when she stopped crushing on him, she'd relished his friendship, even when he rolled his eyes at her or insisted they do something fun instead of studying, because he didn't mind talking about complex magical theory and he found magic as fascinating as she did. Sometimes they irritated the hell out of each other, and Hermione had a sneaking suspicion that if they hadn't both been so terribly lonely then they wouldn't have been friends at all, but they were and they did and in the end that was all that mattered.

Now Harry was god knows where and it broke her heart. The papers claimed he was in a secure facility and she dreaded to think what he was suffering. She was only certain that he wasn't dead and Neville agreed; Voldemort would never let Harry's death go unremarked.

She was eternally grateful for Neville. Harry might be her oldest friend, but Neville was her best friend. That might have been different if Harry had been in Gryffindor with them—a lot of things might have been different, she thought, if Harry was a Gryffindor—but she would never know. Part of her was glad Harry hadn't been her best friend; she wasn't sure how much worse things might feel right now if he had been. If she'd lost her best friend, she wouldn't have someone who understood the conflicting feelings she had towards Harry. She wouldn't have had someone to say _me too_ and make her feel that she wasn't a terrible person because she didn't truly hate Harry for being a murderer.

But by the time July rolled around, wizards were being executed in public and Muggles were being slaughtered in their homes without retribution, and Hermione knew she had to do something. What she wanted to do was fight; she wasn't the kind of person that sat back and averted her gaze when she saw an injustice—but how was she supposed to fight? She was seventeen years old and didn't even have a wand. Simply showing her face in any wizarding area could get her arrested or killed.

Worse, news came that Muggleborn students and their families were being killed even when they stayed away. It wasn't in the newspapers, but Neville reported that the Finch-Fletchley family was murdered, and Dean Thomas' house was burned down, though the family were fortunately on holiday in the Isle of Wight at the time. Hermione's hands shook when she read Neville's letter.

 _You have to leave the country. Convince your parents to take you somewhere else. Gran says she'll do anything she can to help, if you need it. I will too, but you have to get away before they come after you. I can't stand to lose you._

Even though she'd told her parents about things, it was only then that they fully realised just how serious things where. They talked about it for longer than Hermione liked, but in the end they agreed. They would take a month's holiday in Australia and during it figure out what to do in the long term. The abrupt leave would cause a little trouble for Mr and Mrs Granger's work, but they knew their safety was more important.

They left just in time. When Hermione reached her hotel room in Sydney (they were staying only for a week, then looking into renting a villa or perhaps a caravan and taking a touring holiday up the coast) an owl was already waiting for her at the window. It wasn't the one that usually brought Neville's letters, but an ink stamp on the envelope revealed that it'd come through the Hogsmeade post office for international delivery.

 _They burned down your house._

It was as far as she got before bursting into tears.

In the end, they stayed in Sydney and rented a holiday villa. As the weeks went on, her parents talked about staying and settling down there. They'd always wanted to visit Australia and often talked about it being where they went to retire; under the circumstances, it made sense to relocate there now.

The only objection to the idea was that Australia had no magic school of its own. They had a small wizarding population and the young Australian witches and wizards who weren't home-schooled attended either the Kyoto School of Magic, in Japan, or one of the USA's three wizarding schools. Mr and Mrs Granger weren't happy at the prospect of sending her to school so far away, but home education was obviously not an option.

"What about attending a normal school?" her father had suggested one day.

"Magical school is normal school for me, Dad," she'd replied.

Hermione knew he meant well, but the idea of going to a Muggle school simply wasn't an option. She was a witch, no matter that her wand had been taken from her. Perhaps if she'd been younger then losing her magical education would have been more bearable, but as a legal adult witch it was unthinkable. Technically, being over seventeen, she didn't need a final year of education in the magical world, but she was too academically inclined to be happy with only her OWLs.

In the end, they settled on America. Hermione could get by in Japan with a Translation Charm, but her parents couldn't and they weren't willing to stay in Australia while their daughter was over 4000 miles away, not after everything that'd happened. So while Hermione applied to the Salem Witches Institute, the US School of Magic, and the Magerra Academy, her parents looked for work and sent off for the relevant visas.

They were set to leave Australia on 15th August, but a few days before the end of July, a letter came from Neville with more bad news: Harry was going to be executed.

Hermione knew, immediately, that she had to be there. It would be incredibly dangerous, and the idea of seeing him executed utterly horrified her, but the thought of Harry being killed without a single friendly face to witness it made her want to cry. No one should have to die surrounded only by people who hated them. She was his oldest friend; didn't she owe it to him to make sure that didn't happen?

Her parents would object, she knew, so she sought forgiveness rather than permission. At dawn on the last day of July—her dawn, in Sydney, while it was still the previous day in England—she left a letter for her parents, guiltily stole her father's credit card, and Apparated to Melbourne. As part of her preparations for moving to America, she and her parents had already visited Melbourne so Hermione could go to the wizarding district and get herself a new wand. Now she went to the International Floo Hub, bought some powder, and got through customs until she could take a fireplace to Paris.

Flooing directly to Britain wasn't an option, and both parts of Ireland had increased their security since Voldemort took over, afraid they'd be next. Paris was the next best place; from there she Apparated to Calais, where she caught a Ferry to Dover. She worried about that the most; still seven weeks shy of her eighteenth birthday, she feared they wouldn't let her travel alone, but it was under sixteens they worried about. She got through without so much as a suspicious glance, even when she used her father's credit card to pay.

Five minutes after landing in England, just as the sun was setting, she knocked on Neville's front door.

* * *

By ten to noon on 31 July, Hogsmeade High Street was packed with people. The execution dock—set up and pulled down every Saturday—was situated at the north end of the street, with Hogwarts Castle looming over it in the background. At present, only the executioner and a notary were on it, the executioner's face distorted by a charm that made his identity impossible to determine.

The Assistant wondered if they subscribed to the belief executioners should be anonymous, or was just more ashamed of their work than Walden Macnair had been.

A line of Death Eaters stood before the dock, wands in hand, and more were situated throughout the village. They scanned the faces of the crowd, and sent Stinging Hexes at people getting rowdy, with threats of worse.

The Assistant expected this kind of security. It presented absolutely no problem to his initial plan, but over the past few days, Narcissa, James, Draco, and even Kirith and Poppy had argued to be involved. So, reluctantly, he'd altered his plans. Admittedly, not cutting Harry's hands off meant he wasn't fighting an order and came with less danger to himself—Harry's subsequent burst of power could very well expel on the Assistant rather than on Voldemort like the Assistant was hoping. But this plan had its own dangers, not least of which was bringing the others to a place swarming with Death Eaters.

There were many familiar faces in the crowd on the street—Hogwarts' teachers, former and current students and their parents, members of the Order of the Phoenix, though the group was dismantled. The Assistant was glad to see them; he knew some of them well enough to know they'd jump into a fight if it started, and a fight was exactly what would happen, though hopefully not a long one.

Narcissa and James were down in the crowd, too, faces transfigured, and Kirith was at the front edge of the crowd, eying the execution dock with clear distaste.

The Assistant himself was perched on a platform set on the roof of the Three Broomsticks, the building closest to the execution dock. His ear ached. Two days ago it flared with pain and now it hurt constantly and wouldn't stop ringing.

Draco was at the other end of the platform, with Poppy, and Harry sat between them in a wheelchair, all hidden from view. Draco was speaking softly to Harry, telling him to focus on Voldemort, to secure him and save them all from any danger as soon as he could.

This was the riskiest part of the plan, relying on Harry to direct his outburst of magic when the cuffs came off. Harry hadn't shown any sign of cognizance in the last four days, but the Assistant was sure he wasn't brain dead, as the others feared. He had to be sure, or this whole plan was fucked.

Five minutes before noon, a prisoner's carriage appeared on the road near the train station, drawn by two thestrals. The crowd stilled and quieted as it approached; there was still a soft murmur of noise, but even that fell silent when the carriage stopped behind the dock and Voldemort Apparated onto the stage at the same time.

Two Death Eaters hopped down from the driver's seat and went to the back of the carriage, pulling open the doors and waving their wands inside. Two hooded figures floated out, following the guidance of the Death Eaters' wands, and levitated up onto the stage. They were set down on their knees, their wrists were already shackled behind their backs, and once put down it was clear to see that one was significantly taller than the other.

The Death Eaters stayed behind the dock, but Voldemort stepped forward and waved his wand at the two prisoners. Their hoods vanished, revealing Lucius and Harry—or rather, Severus as Harry. The hair used for the Polyjuice must have been taken from Harry before he was badly injured; Severus had his right eye, no scarring on his face, and wore Harry's prosthetic. Whatever injury he suffered to his ear was hidden by the transformation.

Lucius looked no better. A prideful man to the end, he tried to keep his chin up and back straight, but he was clearly in too much pain, hunching over with his face pale and drawn. He showed no obvious injuries, but James had been suffering pain in his shoulder and abdomen for the last day that suggested Lucius had internal injuries.

When the only noise left was the cooing of pigeons and Lucius and Severus' ragged breathing, Voldemort spoke.

"The people before you are traitors. This child—" he touched his wand to the crown of Severus' head "—murdered the headmaster of our prized school and sought to do the same to me. The man beside him tried also to stand against me, and failed, and they will both pay the price for such betrayal."

Voldemort took his wand from Severus and slowly paced behind the two prisoners.

"In recent weeks I have sought to change our world for the better. We have suffered instability, but that is the price of all change. Soon, things will calm and those of you who still doubt me will see that I am ushering wizarding Britain into a new era of prosperity and freedom from impurity. The people who kneel before you wish to destroy all my hard work, to keep us in a state of insecurity, to leave us vulnerable to the threats we face from the magicless filth that threaten to overrun this country—this world. Their deaths will bring us one step closer to becoming a safe and powerful nation."

Without taking his gaze off Severus, the Assistant turned his head and murmured, "It could take as long as minute for me to get into his mind. When I attack, you'll be visible. Protect them, Poppy."

"Work quickly, Assistant," Poppy said.

He smiled grimly. "You don't need to tell me twice."

He rolled his shoulders under his rune-covered cloak, straightened up, and flew down to the dock, landing behind Voldemort just as the village clock starting chiming noon. His nature inclined him to announcing himself, to making a drama of things, but this was about more than just him. There was too much at stake today for his dramatics; the most he did was make himself visible.

Then he lifted his hands, placed them on either side of Voldemort's head, digging his nails into the waxy skin, and forced his way into Voldemort's mind with all the finesse of a wrecking ball.

* * *

James moved as soon as he saw the Assistant appear behind Voldemort. He didn't care that he hurt everywhere, that lifting his arm made his shoulder twinge; his Master was in danger and all James cared about was saving him.

He'd managed to situate himself near the stage, as close as he could get with the line of Death Eaters standing before the crowd. When the Assistant appeared, he jerked out his wand and cursed the nearest one.

After that, there was near chaos. The Assistant had said he hoped other onlookers would fight, but James had doubted it. He was surprised to be proven wrong. A red-haired woman he knew to be Narcissa was the first, but he caught glimpses of other familiar faces—members of the Order—turning on the Death Eaters. Even a surprising number of otherwise normal witches and wizards suddenly showed their courage and rebellion, whilst the rest fled for safety or Apparated away. Others revealed their dark side by joining to fight with the Death Eaters.

Voldemort didn't move. He and the Assistant stood like an absurd statue, eyes unfocused, only their clothes fluttering in the wind.

James fought to reach the stage. He cursed anyone who got in his way, not thinking twice about using dark magic. He'd been Bonded to Lucius again for six weeks, but it was enough—enough to destroy any morals he'd regained during his year with Sirius. He spent fourteen years with Lucius; it wasn't hard to go back to how things were before. It was how they were meant to be.

He may have killed—he never used the Killing Curse, he wasn't capable of that, but he didn't know what extended damage some of his curses did—and he didn't care. He fought and moved, climbed onto the stage when he reached it, and went straight to Lucius, crouching behind him and touching his wand to the shackles binding his wrists.

"Precious," Lucius murmured, "what are you doing here?"

"Saving you."

"Where's Draco?"

" _Potter_ ," Snape croaked.

James looked up. A bleeding Death Eater clambered onto the stage. James thrust his wand over Lucius' shoulder and sent of a Blood Boiling Curse at them. Even before they hit the stage his wand was back down on the shackles.

Snape coughed; blood splashed his lips. "I'm surprised. That'll kill them."

James didn't respond. Lucius' ropes loosened and fell away. "Where's—"

A spell passed over his head from behind. He ducked instinctively, pushing Lucius down, and twisted his head around just in time to see a spell strike the platform on top of the Three Broomsticks, where Harry, Draco, and Poppy Pomfrey were safe from the fight. Over the noise of the battle, there was a distant clatter of chains.

Then the wand of Voldemort and every loyal Death Eater and those who'd fought with them shattered into thousands of splinters, and the Death Eaters and their comrades all suddenly dropped dead.

(Unbeknownst to anyone in Hogsmeade, all across the country other Death Eaters were dropping dead, as were those supporters who weren't marked but gladly would have been if offered the opportunity.)

Voldemort did not die, but was hauled into the air, and chains appeared to wrap around him so tightly they were almost suffocating. A metal sheet appeared and folded around him—a coffin, for all intents and purpose—and glowed red-hot briefly as runes etched into all six sides.

Then, with the speed of a meteorite, it crashed into the ground. The dirt gave way like water and the box disappeared beneath the soil. Those still standing staggered as they felt the earth tremble briefly, and then it was still, the ground as solid and firm as it had ever been, and Voldemort was gone.


	54. Chapter 54

**Chapter 54**

As soon as Voldemort cast the spell to unlock Harry's chains, the Assistant let him go and flung himself down by Severus. He didn't watch to see what happened to Voldemort, barely even paid attention to the exploding wands and dying Death Eaters. He pulled off his cloak and swung it around Severus' shoulders.

Only then did he wriggle his fingers to unlock the shackles, and then he laid a hand on Severus' cheek. He closed his eyes, focused on the Polyjuice Potion winding through Severus' veins, and sped up its process until it burned out. He removed his hand when he felt Severus' skin begin to change.

He watched Severus return to normal, catching the false blue eye when it popped out of the socket and Severus' grew in place. His ear, meanwhile, sunk into the flesh of his head, leaving a bloody mess where it was meant to be.

"That explains the earache I've got," the Assistant said.

He wasn't sure Severus heard him. He collapsed against the Assistant, which really went to show how bad he was feeling, and muttered, "Harry?"

"He's safe, Severus."

Severus gave a weak grunt, and passed out.

"We have to get out," Lucius said.

The Assistant glanced up to see Kirith and Narcissa already on the platform and several Aurors converging around it, wands still up and distrust amidst the shock on their faces. Others were aiming their wands up at the Three Broomsticks and someone called for a ladder.

The Assistant touched a finger to his throat and spoke, his voice echoing over the whole village, pulsing through the walls and burrowing into the ears of everyone within five miles, and every ear that heard it believed it. The only ones exempt were those people who stood on the platform and those on the roof of the Three Broomsticks.

" _Voldemort is dead. His body burned in the sky above this stage._ "

"Assistant—" Lucius hissed, but the Assistant held up a hand to forestall him.

" _Harry Evans killed Lord Voldemort. His death caused the simultaneous death of every true Death Eater. Any remaining marked Death Eater is a traitor._ "

He dropped his hand, feeling a grim satisfaction as people paused, blinking or shaking their heads as their memories resettled.

"You expect them to believe that?" Lucius muttered.

"Don't forget who you're talking to, Luci. If I want them to believe it, they believe it."

Lucius shot him a doubtful look, then spoke to James. "We still have to go, they'll arrest me. Precious, get us out of here."

"There's Anti-Apparition spells up," James said, but he helped Lucius to his feet.

The Assistant turned his attention back to Severus. He doubted Lucius and James would get away, but he didn't care either way. Severus was his only concern right then; he'd saved his Master's life, and now he'd get him healed. Nothing else mattered.

* * *

Hermione peered through the window of the hospital room door, Neville standing beside her and keeping watch for any healers, orderlies, or Ministry officials who might shoo them away. They'd been told at the main reception that Harry wasn't permitted visitors, but they'd overheard a couple of Aurors talking and found out which room was his. They'd gone up the hospital under the pretence of visiting Neville's parents, but detoured on the fourth floor and sought out Harry's room.

Inside, Harry was prone on a bed. Severus Snape, with a bandage taped to one side of his head, was asleep in another. Between them the Assistant was sprawled in a chair, also apparently asleep.

"Can we go in?" Neville whispered, although there was no one nearby.

"Snape and the Assistant are in there."

"Does that mean no?"

"I think they're sleeping," Hermione said. "As long as we're quiet…"

She slowly turned the handle and pushed the door open, wincing when it creaked slightly, but Snape and the Assistant didn't react. They slipped inside, footsteps light and quiet. Neville stopped just inside the room, glancing warily between the two sleeping men, while Hermione moved around the side of the first bed to look down on Harry. He looked so small and frail beneath the covers. His right eye was covered by a simple black patch, but it didn't hide the twisted scar below it.

As well as the scar beneath his eyepatch, both cheeks had faded white scars in the shape of runes that Hermione didn't recognise. The blankets were pulled up, but he must have shifted in his sleep because one arm had come free. Numerous scars ran from the base of his hand and up his wrist beneath his sleeve, and there were black marks on the skin between the scars. His fingers didn't quite sit right, curling and twisted slightly.

She reached towards him, intending just to brush her fingers lightly over the black marks. They almost looked like a tattoo, broken by the scars. She'd never seen any tattoo on Harry, but that hardly meant much. She'd never known Harry was a Death Eater who'd kill their headmaster, either.

Her fingers were an inch from his wrist when a quiet voice said, "Don't touch him."

She jumped, and only avoided screaming in surprise because she choked on saliva on the inhale. Neville gave a high pitched squeak, and both of them turned towards the Assistant. He hadn't moved from his slumped position, but his eyes had opened and were fixed on Hermione.

Hermione cleared her throat, sought for something to say, and eventually settled on, "Why can't I touch him?"

"Because he'll burn your fingers."

Hermione glanced down at Harry, who was still unconscious as far as she could tell, and then back up. "I'm his friend, and he's asleep. He wouldn't hurt me."

"He hurts almost everyone else," the Assistant said. "I'm sure you know what his magic is like. It's defending him, conscious or not."

Hermione looked down at Harry again, her heart aching. What horrors had he suffered that made him so afraid of being touched?

"Should we leave?" Neville asked. Hermione wasn't sure who he was asking, but she looked to the Assistant for an answer.

The Assistant shrugged. "Stay if you like. Severus is asleep. Just keep the noise down."

Neville eyed their sleeping ex-professor warily. He was pale and drawn, especially with that bandage taped to the side of his head.

They still didn't know how he was alive when they'd seen him die. Hermione knew that her memories of the kidnapping over a year ago were false because she couldn't remember Harry agreeing to join the Death Eaters, but she didn't know what had really happened that night. Had Snape been held prisoner for over a year? It seemed unlikely to her; she didn't know much about Voldemort's thought process, but she was sure Voldemort had wanted Snape dead that night. If he had only imprisoned the man, she didn't see why he would alter their memories about it.

But how had Snape survived a Killing Curse and where had he been for the past year? Did Harry have anything to do with it? Had he known his father was alive all this time?

Intrigued as she was, right then Hermione was more concerned by the Assistant. Hermione had seen him attack Voldemort before he died, but she'd heard enough about his other antics not to trust him. How could she trust a man who'd chosen to send an eleven year old to fight Voldemort for the Philosopher's Stone when he could have gone himself?

"The Aurors downstairs said you wouldn't let them in the room and threatened them if they tried to arrest Harry," she said.

The Assistant smiled thinly. "Technically I didn't threaten them. All I did was point out that we're in a state of emergency and they've got much more important things to do than arrest anyone in this room. They've no right trying to haul Harry off after what he's been through, especially after he just killed the Dark Lord."

Kingsley Shacklebolt, elected interim Minister For Magic, had declared the state of emergency on discovering that eighty-three people were dead in the wake of Execution Day, as they were calling it. Many of them were Ministry officials, so those remaining were desperately trying to restore some semblance of order, not only dealing with the abrupt loss of so many people but also dismantling the laws and restrictions that had been made over the past six weeks.

It helped that all those who were firmly in support of the recent laws were now dead, and those who might have been quietly in support of them were clever enough to keep their opinions to themselves. There were rumours that not everyone who died when Voldemort did had actually been a Death Eater, but Hermione had heard nothing definitive. Still, no one wanted to risk dropping dead because they supported Death Eater ideals.

"He killed Professor Dumbledore," Neville said quietly.

"So why are you here?" Snape said, making Hermione and Neville jump. They looked at him and Snape glared back as he sat up, the expression so familiar that Hermione briefly flashed back to being in the dungeons at Hogwarts, that glare fixed on her and Neville as Snape berated them for Neville melting another cauldron. "Were you hoping to rebuke him for his action? Try and turn him over to the Aurors? Attack him yourselves?"

"No! Harry's our friend, we'd never hurt him."

"You expect me to believe that you don't hold Dumbledore's murder against him?"

"I don't agree with it," Hermione said. "I think what he did is terrible and I wish he hadn't done it, but he's still my friend."

"We wouldn't be here if he wasn't," Neville added.

"And if the Aurors turned up and tried to arrest him? Would you stand in their way?"

Hermione hesitated. Snape's mouth twisted and she clenched her fists, glaring at him.

"Don't look at me like that," she snapped. "I love Harry, he's the first friend I ever had; I risked my life coming back to England, I left my parents half way around the world, because I didn't want him to be surrounded by people who hate him when he died." She paused to take a shaking breath, glancing at Harry, prone and small beneath the blankets. "But he's a murderer and he had no reason to kill Professor Dumbledore. Prison is the punishment for that."

Snape shoved his blankets back and got out of bed. The fact he was dressed in a nightgown and the bandage on his head was clearly visible even through the strands of his greasy hair didn't stop Hermione taking an instinctive step back. She forced herself not to go further, standing her ground before Snape until he reached out, grabbed her roughly by the back of the head and spun her around, forcing her head to look down at Harry.

"Hermione!" Neville cried, but the Assistant waved his hand and Neville was forced back. Hermione tried to reach for her wand, but her hands wouldn't move.

"Do you see what's been done to him?" Snape snarled, hand tight in Hermione's hair, although she could feel it trembling slightly. He had his wand in his other hand and waved it, making Harry's eye patch fold back to reveal a grotesquely mutilated eyeball beneath it. "Is that not punishment enough? Shall I pull up his shirt so you can count his ribs? Do you see the hands he nearly lost and which will never fully heal? Perhaps I'll summon the healer so you can hear about the damage done to his brain that's left him blind and very probably mentally impaired."

He let go of her and she stumbled back, hands finally free to move, though she didn't draw her wand. She could only lift them to her mouth, trying to choke down sobs even as she felt tears spill down her face.

Snape flicked his wand and the eyepatch flipped back into place, and he stepped aside to lean against his own bed. He was clearly weak himself, but it didn't stop him glowering at her.

"Healer Karpel and Draco Malfoy are the only people that can touch him without getting hurt," Snape said, unrepentant and unmoved by her tears. "Even they can't do so when he's unconscious. He hasn't spoken a word to anyone, and we have no idea if that's because he's too brain damaged or just too traumatised. But you—" his gaze flicked from Hermione to Neville and back again "—you two would condemn him to Azkaban regardless, and still have the nerve to call yourselves his _friends_."

He spat the last word. Neville stared miserably at the floor, but Hermione lowered her hands and glared through her tears at Snape.

"I didn't know—"

"You didn't _think_ , just like you never do.

"That's not fair, professor."

"I am not your professor, Granger, and you're old enough to know that life's not fair. If it were, my son wouldn't be lying in that bed right now."

"Some might say it's karma," Neville's tentative voice said, and he flushed as all eyes turned on him.

"Karma?" Snape repeated in a dangerously soft voice.

Neville flushed deeper still, his face now a fierce red colour, and glanced down at his feet. For a moment, he looked as if he'd become the nervous, terrified boy he'd always been in Snape's classes at Hogwarts, but whether because he wasn't in a dungeon or because he'd been free of Snape's overbearance for a year or because he'd just found his courage now, he lifted his head again and glared back at Snape.

"He killed people—innocent people. They published a list in the _Daily Prophet_ of all the people he murdered and tortured over the last year."

"Everything he did, he did at the command of the Dark Lord," Snape snarled, "in order to save _your_ pathetic life. You have no idea the torment he suffered at having to do those things, but he did them for _you_ , you ungrateful little bastard."

"I didn't ask him to!" Neville cried, trembling slightly in the face of Snape's anger but standing firm. "I never asked him to do those things. I'd have died if that's what it took. So would Hermione, and Ginny."

"And Sirius Black and James Potter, Tyler Lyle and Cid Villiers? Would they have gladly died to save a bunch of strangers?"

"Maybe."

"And then Harry would have," Snape spat. "The Dark Lord wouldn't have allowed him to live without your lives as something to control him with. He then would have sent someone else to murder everyone that Harry killed, including Dumbledore, and he would still have taken over, but there would have been no one left to stop him."

Neville opened and closed his mouth, stuck for words.

"But you—" Hermione said to the Assistant, who'd watched the proceedings without a word. He spoke now, cutting her off before she could say anything more.

"Don't look at me. I'd have still been happily drugged up to my eyeballs in Muggle London if Severus hadn't dragged me back into things."

"I would have left the country as soon as my son died," Severus said coolly. "So think again if you really want to condemn Harry for his choices, and do it elsewhere."

When they didn't immediately move, he jerked his wand up and the door slammed open. " _Out!_ "

They fled.

* * *

Minerva looked up at the imposing grey building as the gates swung open before her, unable to suppress a sense of foreboding. Malfoy Manor was half the size of Hogwarts, but it seemed to loom over her in a way that the school never did. Peacocks squawked as walked up the driveway and the large door swung open when she was halfway up the front steps. Severus Snape was just beyond it to greet her.

"What do you want, Minerva?"

She looked him over. His hair hid the ear she knew he was missing now and he'd actually gained a bit of weight in the last year, but he looked older, stress lines furrowing his forehead, dark shadows under his eyes, even a few strands of grey in his hair. Still—

"It's nice to see that being dead hasn't changed you, Severus."

He scowled at her, then glanced away briefly, and when he looked back his voice softened slightly. Not quite apologetic, but as close as Severus ever got.

"Most of the people asking for me over the past fortnight haven't been friendly."

"I was there two weeks ago," Minerva said. "I stood by you and Harry on Execution Day. I should think I've earned some trust, Severus."

He exhaled heavily. "It's been a rough couple of weeks."

"It's been a rough couple of months," she agreed, and that was an apology and forgiveness.

"Did you want something to drink?" Severus asked, showing her in. "Narcissa won't mind if you want to come in for a bit."

"Will you tell me how you survived a year ago?"

His mouth twisted slightly with irritation, but five minutes later Minerva was seated in the drawing room. Narcissa Black had greeted Minerva briefly, but left her and Severus to talk privately. Severus explained his survival from a year before while they waited for the house elf to bring tea.

"Your son never fails to surprise," Minerva said after the tea was delivered, shivering slightly at the thought of being buried underground for a week. "How's he doing? I tried to visit at the hospital but they wouldn't let me in."

"You can't see him now," Severus said, half warning, half apology. "He's… not good, Minerva. The only person he's spoken to is Kirith Karpel, and then only in monosyllables. She's given him potions to take daily and done all the healing spells she can, but his recovery is a matter of time now." He paused, mouth twisting angrily. "The Ministry wants him in Azkaban and the healer's wanted to move him to the long term ward. I couldn't let them do that, it would have been a disaster."

"Kingsley did try to object to the call for arrest," Minerva told him apologetically, "but so many are calling for it…"

Severus' face twisted angrily. "He killed the Dark Lord and freed them from everything that happened through June and July."

"He also killed Albus."

He shot her a dark look. "Do _you_ hold that against him?"

"I won't say it doesn't bother me. I saw it happen, Severus, right in front of me."

His expression softened at that. "I'm sorry for that, Minerva, but Albus brought it on himself."

Minerva almost spilt her tea and hurriedly set it aside. "How can you say that? You weren't even there!"

"Lucius told me Harry was wearing some wrists cuffs right before he did it and that Albus appeared surprised when Harry was able to remove them."

"Yes," Minerva agreed slowly. "So—"

"The same cuffs Albus put on him before. The ones that almost killed him."

Minerva pursed her lips. "Well…"

Severus shook his head, hand clenching into a fist on the arm of his chair. His hair swung and she caught a glimpse of vivid red scarring where his ear used to be. "Those cuffs nearly killed Harry once before, that bastard put them on him again—that's attempted murder. Harry had every right to kill him."

"Severus, he knew they were coming," Minerva said sternly. "Albus wasn't surprised when we saw the Dementors or when the guards announced that You Know Who was at the gate. He wasn't surprised when we saw Harry at You Know Who's side."

"That didn't give him the right to put those things on my son! Minerva, Harry's worst fear is being powerless. It terrifies him to be restrained like that, it's no wonder he killed Albus. He got what was coming to him, I won't be moved on that."

Minerva sniffed, picked up her tea again, drained it. The worst thing was, she didn't fully disagree with Severus. Certainly she didn't think Harry should have killed Albus, but she could understand why he had.

She lowered the empty cup, swirling it gently and watching the dregs spin.

"Did you have a reason for coming here, Minerva? Or was it just to catch up?"

She set the cup aside and looked at him. "I would like to catch up, yes, and say that if there's anything I can do for you or Harry then just ask, but I had another reason for coming."

He raised an eyebrow.

"Would you like a job?"

His second eyebrow rose to join the first. "You're Headmistress now? Slughorn doesn't want to teach another year?"

"No, he's agreed to work another year. Actually, I need a Defence teacher."

For a moment, Severus didn't react, and then he laughed. It was loud and hard and a little bit wild, and she rather thought it was a year's worth of stress finally releasing itself. Minerva sat back in her seat and waited for Severus to get control of himself.

When his laughter stopped, he sighed, but it was a lighter noise than he'd made since she came in, less stressed. "Every year I applied for that job and every year Albus turned me down, and now it's being offered to me without even asking."

"I know you wanted it and I know you're qualified."

"And you're limited for choice," he said.

She couldn't deny it. "I couldn't use the person the governors had picked. Amycus Carrow," she said at his questioning look.

He scowled heavily. "I know him. A Death Eater."

"A dead Death Eater," Minerva confirmed. "His name was on the list of those killed on Execution Day. His sister, too; she was meant to teach Muggle Studies."

Severus frowned at that. "What happened to Charity?"

Minerva looked down, smoothing her hands over her lap, trying not to let the anger she felt overwhelm her. "She sent in her resignation a week after term ended, but then she went missing. Kingsley told me that James Potter says she was killed by You Know Who himself."

The familiar flash of hatred crossed Severus' face at the name. "What I hear is true then. Potter's divulging all the Death Eaters' dirty secrets."

Minerva nodded. "Kingsley said he asked for immunity for Lucius Malfoy in exchange. Kingsley wouldn't give it," she added at Severus' sharp look. "They have too much on Malfoy to release him. They agreed to some sort of visitation between James and Malfoy—are you aware of this slavery enchantment between them?"

Severus nodded once. Minerva shook her head.

"I don't understand why Kingsley allows it. James should be kept as far from that monster as possible."

"It'd be worse for him," Severus said, with less nastiness than Minerva might have expected. It was uncharitable to think, but Severus' hatred of James was legendary and she'd seen it from youth to adulthood. It wouldn't surprise her if Severus was happy to see James magically enslaved to Lucius Malfoy. "Animancupium forces a need to be close. Potter needs to see Lucius regularly; it'd be harmful to him not to."

"You seem to know a lot about it, Severus."

"I read, Minerva," he snapped.

"Calm down, I'm not accusing you of anything. You haven't answered me. Will you take the Defence post?"

He looked away, gaze going to the doors of the drawing room, and then his eyes turned upwards, as if he could see through the ceiling. It wasn't hard to guess what he was looking towards, if brick and stone wasn't in the way. She knew what his answer would be before it came.

"I can't leave my son, Minerva. I may not be able to touch him, but I can be here for him. I have to."

She leant forwards, reaching over to lay a hand on his arm. He looked down at it in surprise and then met her gaze.

"Of course you do. I'd never ask you to abandon your child, Severus."

"If I'd said yes, would you have let me bring him with me?" he asked sceptically, and when she hesitated to answer he laid his other hand over hers. "I wouldn't want him there anyway."

She squeezed his arm then drew her hand away. "I can't bring Albus' murderer into the castle, not after what we went through after his death."

"What do mean?" he asked, then, after she described what life had been like for them in the last two weeks of term, he sighed. "At least you only lost two students. I didn't think he'd send the Muggleborns home."

"Only so he could kill them later. A dozen former students have been murdered," she explained at his surprised look. "Another dozen missing, and every single one of the incoming Muggleborns that were supposed to start this September are confirmed dead."

"Merlin," he breathed, looking duly horrified. "You're in for a quiet castle this year."

"It'll be easier," she admitted guiltily. "With everything that's happened, it'll be easier to deal with fewer students for a year."

"Can't blame you for wanting that after the last couple of years."

A knock on the door had them both looking around. It swung open and Minerva stiffened slightly at the sight of the Assistant. She'd been there on Execution Day and seen what he'd done, but he'd been firmly on Voldemort's side once and she didn't know enough about him to know if he was truly safe to be around.

Severus didn't look surprised to see him. Minerva had seen the way they interacted on Execution Day, how protective the Assistant had been of Severus when the Aurors tried to arrest everyone. There was something between them, although she wasn't sure what; she didn't think it was romantic or sexual, whatever it was.

The Assistant didn't enter the room properly, just lingered in the doorway. "Is everything alright in here?"

"We're fine," Severus told him stiffly. "You're supposed to be sitting with Harry."

"Narcissa wanted to talk with Draco; they're both with him. I'm going out."

Severus scowled at him. "So? I'm not your father, I don't need informing of your every movement."

The Assistant's mouth twitched with amusement. "Whatever you say, Severus. I won't be long."

He left and as the door clicked shut, Minerva looked back to Severus. "He's living here too? Do you trust him?"

Severus considered that. "With some things."

"You trust him with Harry."

"Yes," he said quietly. "I don't expect you to understand why, but I do."

"I hope it's trust deserved, for Harry's sake," Minerva said, and stood up. "I should probably go. I need to find a Defence teacher. Perhaps I'll ask James."

"You didn't go to him first? He did teach last year."

"With Sirius. I wasn't sure how he'd be by himself, and I'm still wary of having someone magically bound to Lucius Malfoy teaching. Do you have any suggestions?"

He shook his head, standing as well, but then paused thoughtfully. "Have you considered Narcissa?"

Minerva couldn't help raising her eyebrows to that. Narcissa Black was not a woman she could imagine as a teacher, and she said as such.

"No," Severus agreed, "but you might be able to convince her of it, at least for a year, which gives you time to look for someone else."

"What makes you think I can convince her to work for a year?"

Severus mouth tightened and he looked around as if there might be someone else in the room. "Draco's hardly left Harry's side these past two weeks," he said, looking back to her. "Narcissa had to drag him out of the hospital to give a statement to the Aurors about Execution Day. When he realises Harry won't be going back to Hogwarts, I think he might refuse to go as well."

"You think if Narcissa works at Hogwarts it'll convince Draco to go as well," Minerva realised.

"I do, and I think Narcissa will want him to go. It won't do him or Harry any good for him to stay."

"Even though Draco's one of the only people that can touch him?"

Severus sighed heavily, turning away from her. He moved around the chair and then turned again, fisting his hands on the top of it. When he spoke, his voice was regretful and angry, but Minerva wasn't sure who the anger was directed at.

"If Harry recovers, and truthfully, Minerva, that's a big if, it's going to take a long time. Years. Draco can't put off his whole life to sit at Harry's side, and right now Harry's physical recovery means he's bed bound. If Draco insists on staying by Harry, let him do it when he's finished school."

She could see his point. "I assume Narcissa's qualified?"

Severus nodded. "She knows her Defence; you'd have to ask her about her actual NEWT marks."

"And whether she's at all interested."

Severus straightened up and gestured to the door. "I'll show you the way."

* * *

Danielle Baines learned to kill in the second world war. She had to, or the person who turned her into a vampire and the people that ordered it would have killed her. She learned how to kill with her teeth and her hands, and later she learned how to kill with knives and guns. She only ever killed in self-defence, and after the war she only ever killed magical people, and she never took pleasure in it, but it was a necessity for survival. Sometimes killing was the only way she could stop someone from killing her, and sometimes killing when she fed was the only way to avoid starving.

There were times when she had the urge to kill for other reasons—vengeance, anger, greed—but it was fifty years before she gave into one of those urges.

She never interacted with her family after she was turned into a vampire. Her family were Muggles, and stiff-lipped ones at that. They wouldn't handle the existence of magic and vampires any better than they handled her falling in love with a poor street boy. She'd kept her distance, but kept an eye on them, knew when her brother got married and had children, and then grandchildren and more. She would visit them a few times a year, but when she visited the family of one of her brother's grandchildren and discovered they'd all been murdered, she finally decided there were other reasons to kill. That it was wizards who'd done it only made the decision easier.

She came to the scene after the murderers were gone and the Aurors had done their laughable attempt at investigation. She didn't know if they'd noticed the foreign blood on the carpet; it was only a small amount, but it was enough for her. She'd learnt a few things about blood collection over the decades; there was enough for her to take a small taste and collect a drop so she could keep reminding herself of it until she found the owner.

It took nearly five months. When she heard Gabriel Valentine's nest were being courted by Lord Voldemort, she joined up, hoping to meet with the Death Eaters, knowing it was one of them who'd killed her family.

She'd never been part of a nest before; she didn't really enjoy being a vampire and didn't like to be surrounded by others of her kind, nor did she like joining a nest that was at violent odds with another. She didn't care to get involved with other vampire's feuds, but she'd do whatever she had to to find the person who'd murdered her family.

She did it, too. Every evening she sniffed the now long-dried blood she kept in a small vial on a chain around her neck, and when Gabriel fed from the boy that accompanied Voldemort to the mansion on New Years Eve, she recognised the smell immediately. She'd have attacked the child right then, but others held her back. Her situation wasn't unknown; keeping secrets in a nest wasn't easy and she couldn't disguise her reaction when the scent of blood hit her.

She had every intention of attacking as they left, but then she was set on fire.

She was lucky, really. Even after fifty years as a vampire, being set alight like that could kill her quickly; it took hundreds of years to build a decent resilience to fire. But she was on the edges of the crowd, closer to the swimming pool than others. She was able to get to it just in time to collapse into the water, putting herself out in a burst of steam. She was aware of others falling into the water, heard the hiss of doused flames and felt the eddies of water movement, but the fire had done enough damage to leave her senseless. She stayed face down in the water, unable to move; if she'd been human, she'd have drowned.

The nest was all but decimated after that. Maybe twenty vampires survived. Gabriel Valentine wasn't among them, but they couldn't find his body among the corpses, either. Some of them were indistinguishable, but several of the older members were certain he wasn't dead.

Danielle didn't care. Gabriel's nest had been a means to an end. She knew who murdered her family and the only thing she cared about now was killing Harry Evans. She had to recover first, which was months of wasted time, and then she couldn't get past Hogwarts security. She was waiting for the summer holiday, her patience tried like it never had been before.

Then the school was attacked, Voldemort took over, and Harry Evans was even further beyond her reach. She hated Voldemort and his Death Eaters and everything they stood for, but she was willing to do whatever it took to reach Evans. Except they wouldn't give her the time of day. The only ones that would deal with her were low men on the totem pole, no one who could get her to wherever they were holding Evans.

When she heard about Marcus Fleetwood's death, she went to the funeral home the night before the service to pay her respects. Her hatred of magic meant she could never be his friend while he was alive, but she'd liked him, once, when she was human and before magic became something she hated. If she hadn't fallen in love with Nathaniel, she would have been happy to marry Marcus. She might even have grown to love him.

She wasn't sure what made her go looking for Tyler afterwards. She'd thought of him often in the past year, this child who looked just like Nathaniel, who shared his blood, however distantly. A year older now, he looked even more like Nathaniel. It made Danielle want to love him—not that she'd have a relationship with anyone so young—but he was also a wizard and that made her hate him. She'd never felt so conflicted over a person before.

Maybe initially she just wanted to check on him, to see how he was doing after losing his adopted father; the part of her that liked him was sympathetic to that. It wasn't until she found him that she remembered he was friends with Harry Evans. She remembered seeing Evans' picture amidst the vast collection on Tyler's wall at his home in Bath.

She wanted to kill him, then. He was a wizard and he was friends with Harry Evans; for the angry, hateful part of her, that meant he deserved to die, but the moment she sunk her teeth into him, pouncing on him from behind, she knew she couldn't kill him. She couldn't kill Nathaniel's blood.

So she took him. She couldn't really say why. Misplaced hatred and love and bitterness and frustration all bound up inside her—something made taking Tyler seem like a good idea. Once she had him, she didn't know what to do with him. She kept him weak by feeding regularly, but could never bring herself to actually kill him.

Then the world changed again. Voldemort died, his Death Eaters along with him, and Harry Evans was free. Danielle tried to reach him at the hospital, but security was too high. Wizard spells were annoyingly adept at recognising non-humans; she couldn't get past the admissions entrance without getting noticed.

But Tyler had been Evans' friend—had been, because the youngest member of Danielle's family, her brother's great-granddaughter, used to be Tyler's friend. When Danielle told him that Evans was responsible for the girl's murder, Tyler had as much love for Harry Evans as Danielle did.

And he was just as eager for revenge.

* * *

 _In Harry's ideal world, he grew up with three parents—his mother, his father, and his step-father. He spent his childhood between his mother and step-father's home, and Hogwarts where his father worked. He never knew of any aunts or uncles, but he had his godfather and his godfather's lover, both of whom he always called uncle. He might have wished for a sibling occasionally, but mostly he selfishly relished the attention of being an only child._

 _He never defeated a Dark Lord, his life was never darkened by terror, and his only claim to fame was as the son of a couple of war heroes._

 _He was never injured beyond natural childhood injuries, and the only time he ran away from home was because he decided bedtimes were a cruel and unusual punishment. He took a bag with one shirt, one pair of jeans, his favourite Famous Figurine, a chocolate frog and half a box of Every Flavour Beans, and his teddy bear Kiwi, and he got as far as the edge of the village of Godric's Hollow before wimping out and skulking back home just in time for his mother to find his bed empty and start panicking._

 _He had an unusual amount of magical outbursts as a child, which left his parents hopeful that he'd grow into a strong wizard, and he started at Hogwarts right on time. He went to Slytherin, he made friends and enemies and eventually a lover. He explored the castle, did well in some classes and poorly in others, and none of his teachers tried to kill him. His skill in practical magic was well above average, but he never garnered any more attention among the students than those others whose parents had fought the war against Voldemort, which was over and done by the time he was born._

For anyone else, a fantasy was a fantasy. When they daydreamed of a happier childhood and a better past, a daydream is all it was. But for someone with power tailored towards creation and destruction, turning fantasy into a certain kind of reality wasn't quite impossible.

Alternate planes of existence weren't new. Within any given universe, there were at least two—one for bodies, one for souls. Most universes had more than one soul plane. They were more fluid than the physical planes, the places where flesh and blood existed; in the course of a single species' existence, a dozen different soul planes could be created and destroyed. Belief had power, so where any intelligent species had enough belief in an afterlife, a matching soul plane was formed.

Most people didn't have enough power for their belief alone to create such a place, but Harry wasn't most people.

He also had a fractured soul, even within his own body. Murder split the soul, but while Harry had removed a split piece of his soul when he murdered Vernon Dursley, he didn't when he murdered Albus Dumbledore.

So during six weeks of intense mental and physical torture, Harry invented another life, a happy life. For six weeks, it was just a fantasy like anyone else's. A pretend life. Then he was freed from his chains, and while part of him acted to make sure those who'd hurt him, and those who might hurt him, couldn't do it again, another part of him made his fantasy a reality and fled to it.

He could create the world, and he could take a piece of himself there, but even he couldn't fill it with souls. That didn't stop him pretending, and pretending was enough if you believed it hard enough. Even the most powerless Muggle could convince themself that fantasy was reality, and the fractured piece of Harry's soul that fled to a new world was desperate to believe. He couldn't fill it with souls, but he could fill it with facsimiles and that was enough.

But with half his soul in a glass dragon in his father's grave, and another piece pretending to be happy on a completely different plane of existence, it left only a fraction inside his body.

A fraction that really wasn't ready to deal with the world around him.

A fraction far smaller than the soul of Tom Riddle. A soul he'd been seeking comfort from for six weeks, the only friendly voice in a world of pain and fear, so desperate for relief that he broke down the barriers the Assistant had put up to protect him.

So by the time consciousness returned to Harry's body, two people could control it, but only one of them had any inclination to.


	55. Chapter 55

**Chapter 55**

Riddle didn't enjoy being stuck in the body of a near invalid.

He used the name because Harry did, though he was forced to admit it was fitting. He wasn't Tom Riddle, but nor was he Lord Voldemort or Harry Evans. He'd never hated the name Riddle as much as Tom until he found out it was Muggle; under Harry's influence, he found the Muggle connection didn't bother him as much, and Riddle was an accurate description. Even when he knew he was the broken pieces of Lord Voldemort's soul, he couldn't say exactly who he was. His existence might be explained, but his self remained a mystery, so for now he was simply Riddle.

He could have pretended to be Harry when he first came around in St. Mungo's, but he couldn't be bothered. He wasn't worried about being discovered; even if he didn't come off exactly as Harry, no one would question it. They'd been tortured for six weeks; no one expected Harry to be like he was before.

But Riddle had endured it too—some Death Eaters using him for easy stress relief, the crazy ones doing their worst just for shits and giggles, Voldemort's repeated attempts to steal the magic from him and his anger every time he failed—and, now he was free, he didn't want to spend his time pretending to be Harry, so he hardly spoke. It wasn't hard. He was used to not having control of a physical body so he never felt the urge to talk just for the sake of talking.

For the same reason, he didn't do anything about the defensive magic on their body. He couldn't say for sure whether he'd done it himself or if it'd been the last thing Harry did before relinquishing control, but he was glad for it. Logically, he knew that the people around him were highly unlikely to hurt him, but he still felt a deep animal fear whenever someone came close. The feeling absolutely disgusted him, but the most he could do was force himself to accept the occasional touch from the healer or Draco.

In the meantime, as he waited for the slow recovery of their body, he thought of the future. As things stood, the body was more his than Harry's, and if it was in better condition then he'd have been happy to stay in it. He had no problem taking over Harry's life as long as Harry's soul was too fractured and traumatised to claim it. But aside from being physically damaged, in less than a year hellhounds would come for Harry. Riddle had no intention of being present for that.

So he needed something new. He wouldn't reclaim his old body—the one currently twenty feet below the ground. It was old, used, and he wouldn't be able to go anywhere without terrifying everyone who saw him. He could still see some worth in that, the part that was still the original Tom Riddle who'd grown up into Lord Voldemort, but he had the benefit of seeing where that path led and his goals weren't the same. He wasn't entirely sure what his goals were, which parts of his thoughts were his and which were Harry's, but he had time to figure it out.

But he needed a healthy body before he could do anything. He was tempted to take Draco's. Young, handsome, pureblooded, and healthy—he was perfect. But it was doomed to failure. If there was one thing that would drag Harry's fractured soul into taking back control of his body and magic, it was an attack on Draco. He would have to find someone else.

He would need to absorb the rest of the Horcruxes and piece together his own soul first. He knew enough about soul magic to know that it usually needed a complete soul to work. This, at least, was fairly easy. Harry's body might be physically weak, but his magic was working fine. All Riddle needed was some time alone, which admittedly wasn't easy with Draco, Snape, and the Assistant constantly hovering about him, plus regular visits from the healer.

He also needed a way to transfer his soul once it was complete, but he at least had an idea of how to do that: Nyneve's journal. The last thing Riddle remembered reading was her theories on soul transfers and plans to find a way to do it. There was still more to translate and Riddle was certain there was something in there that would tell him how to escape Harry's body. He wasn't worried about the fact he couldn't see. The Assistant owed Harry a favour; Riddle intended to call it in.

He asked for it once they moved him to Malfoy Manor. Doing anything at Saint Mungo's was impossible; the only time he was alone was the bathroom, and the effort it took just to get there from the bed was exhausting. At least at Malfoy Manor he was left alone more, especially when he feigned sleep.

He had a room to himself, opposite Draco's, and he knew Snape and the Assistant were in the room next door. He asked the Assistant for help a day after they moved to the Manor, while the Assistant was the only person sitting with him. It was the first time he'd spoken more than a few words, but the Assistant gave no sign of surprise, at least none that Riddle could detect.

There was just a slight pause after Riddle asked his help, then: "You want me to translate a thousand year old journal? That's the favour you want from me?"

"Is it a problem?"

"No. If it's what you want, I don't mind doing it."

"Thank you," Riddle said, and had nothing more to say.

He dealt with the Horcruxes while everyone else was asleep, making a Wish to ensure everyone was definitely down for the count and he wouldn't be disturbed. He didn't do them all in one night; he was recovering, but he was a long way from being a hundred percent and Harry had seized even when absorbing the locket Horcrux, the one he'd fought Riddle the least on. Those seizures were something else he'd be glad to get rid of once he left Harry; it was weakness he couldn't afford.

He dealt with Nagini first. He wasn't sure where the snake had been in the weeks since Execution Day and it seemed pertinent to deal with her. He was careful to Wish her unconscious first, not wanting to get attacked by a startled snake, and felt the weight drop onto his bed when he Wished for her to appear. He leant forwards, wished a small cut on his hand, and placed his hands on her, concentrating to feel the piece of himself inside her. Harry hadn't been able to—or maybe he just hadn't tried—but Riddle could sense it, draw it out, take it in, with only a small blood sacrifice to help.

It was a loophole in the idea that only remorse could reconnect a soul. None of the books had mentioned it, but it was the only explanation that Riddle had—he wasn't the original, so he could absorb those other pieces of himself. Or perhaps it was just the advantage of Harry's unusual magic.

He took the piece from Nagini without trouble. It fought him, as they all did, because a broken soul rejected being near its other parts, but it was a small piece and had no strength against Riddle's will and Harry's power. He killed the snake in the process and vanished her body, and it was all done with no trouble. He hoped it meant the others would be as easy, but when he handled Hufflepuff's cup the next night, he seized violently.

He came around feeling almost has bad as he had several weeks ago, almost choking on the vomit in his mouth. He Wished his sheets replaced with clean ones, then felt around until he found the cup and was pleased to discover it undamaged. He laughed weakly at that; it was obviously Harry's influence. His original self hadn't cared about desecrating history.

He gave it another few days before he Wished for the diadem, the last Horcrux he had to deal with. That one caused a minor seizure, and he avoided destroying it as well. As he sat recovering from the seizure, he Wished for the cup, the locket, and then, after thinking a moment, Godric Gryffindor's sword. He sat holding it, running his hands carefully over the blade, feeling the smooth, untarnished metal, the gem set into the hilt, the filigreed handle, building an image of the weapon in his head.

He remembered what Dumbledore had said about it: _'Legends say it presents itself only to a worthy Gryffindor.'_ Riddle certainly wasn't that, but he had it now, and the other three. He liked to think there was power in that, but while each piece had some kind of enchantment, although he couldn't determine them without further study, their only real worth came from their history. The part of him that came from Harry could appreciate that, but they were worth nothing to him. He Wished all four to Harry's Gringotts vault; he could do what he liked with them if he ever came back.

He felt different with those pieces of his soul back. More confident, less afraid. He regretted that he'd only killed the Death Eaters on Execution Day instead of making them suffer for what they'd done to him, and he finally realised what he wanted to do with the world. He didn't want to wipe out all the Muggles and Muggleborns; it wasn't possible, and it turned half the wizarding world against him. But separation—the wizarding world could be convinced of that.

Riddle was thinking of rebuilding Hadrian's Wall and turning Scotland into an entirely wizarding country. In time, they could move on England and Wales and claim the whole island. They could take Muggleborns from their parents as soon as their magic was detected, erase the parents' memories so they were none the wiser. The children would be better off raised by wizards who could teach them about magic growing up, instead of just dumping them into it when they were eleven years old.

He still had to take the last part of himself, however. He left that until September, when Draco and Narcissa were gone. He was unsure how smoothly things would go and what effect it would have on him to absorb that part of himself—he wasn't even sure if it would actually work—but the fewer people around to get in the way, the better.

He could have cheered when he heard McGonagall come to offer Narcissa the Defence job and everyone's efforts to convince Draco to return to Hogwarts. He actually decided he'd talk more if that was what it took to make Draco go, but it wasn't necessary. Narcissa, McGonagall, and Snape managed to convince him, under the agreement Draco could return home to see Harry on weekends.

On September the first, once Draco and Narcissa had left, Riddle Wished for Snape to stay away from his bedroom and for the Assistant to give all his attention to translating Nyneve's journal, and Wished for Voldemort. He appeared in Riddle's bedroom, unconscious and still wrapped in chains. Riddle left his bed to kneel by the body, placed his hands on it and suppressed a shudder, some residual fear still lingering in him, and focused on drawing out the soul.

It was only a little harder than the Horcruxes. Voldemort was unconscious, but his soul still fought, possessing more self-awareness than the Horcruxes and clinging to the body made for it, but it couldn't match the vastness of Riddle. Souls weren't meant to be split, and Voldemort's current body was largely a magical construction, not a natural body for a soul to inhabit. Between that, Harry's magic, and Riddle's will, it wasn't overly difficult for him to finally stitch his splintered soul back into one piece.

He'd gained no memories from the Horcruxes even when he found they affected his personality, but he did now. He remembered his life as Voldemort, everything from his childhood to burial in Hogsmeade, the dark magic he'd studied, those painful years as a wraith, his rebirth and short reign. He felt all his old anger and hatred, even towards Harry, but only until he let the feelings settle into him. All the dark magic he'd done, all his attempts to avoid death—it'd amplified and twisted his negative emotions, filling him with them so they were all he felt.

He knew better now. He knew what it was like to feel fondness for someone. To _care_ for someone. More than that, to be cared for in return. He knew what others would say of his relationship with Harry, but the truth was they did care for one another. It wasn't just because they shared a body for years, either. They could easily have hated each other, Harry resenting the intrusion on his body and Riddle resenting being stuck with him, but they hadn't.

So he could let the hate go. He had to let it go. He knew where it had led him before and he didn't want to go down that road again. He had a second chance and he would not fuck it up.

He shivered and withdrew his hands from Voldemort's body, then sent it back to the underground tomb, still alive. It might be prudent to have that body around, just in case.

Now all he had left to do was find some new body for him to take over.

That was when Tyler Lyle showed up and tried to kill him.

* * *

The Assistant threw down his quill, sighed, and pressed the balls of his hands into his eyes, groaning. He heard the library door open and footsteps approaching his table, but didn't need to look to know who it was. There was only three of them left in the house since September started, and even then the Assistant could feel who it was.

"Are you finished yet?" Severus asked.

"Yes, _finally_."

He heard Severus pick something up from the table and dropped his hands, blinking to clear his vision as he looked up. Severus held Harry's notebook containing the translation of Nyneve's journal, a translation that the Assistant had been working on for the last three weeks.

He hadn't minded, but as of this morning he'd been struck by a desperation to finish it that was almost on par with the desperation he got from fulfilling orders from his Master. He'd barely dragged himself away for long enough to shoot up, and he'd mixed cocaine into his heroin to take the edge off the lethargy it caused. He hated doing that; when it came to his drugs, he didn't like mixing uppers and downers.

"Any idea what he wants from it?" Severus asked, flicking through the notebook.

"The soul transfer spell."

Severus paused on the pages of said spell and the accompanying notes, reading through it carefully. "Would this save him from the hellhounds?"

"No," the Assistant answered without hesitation. "The dogs come for souls, not bodies."

He watched Severus read the spell again, flick through the notebook, then snap it shut. He stared down at the front cover, plain red paper, the corners slightly curled and an inkstain near the spine. He looked like he was about to speak, but just as he opened his mouth a loud gong sounded through the house. The Assistant glanced about then back at Severus.

"We expecting guests?"

"No," Severus said, dropping the notebook and drawing his wand. He waved it around the room and then said, "Who is it?"

"Uh, it's Tyler Lyle," a hesitant voice echoed through the room. "I… I was hoping to see Harry?"

Severus frowned. He flicked his wand sharply and the tip lit up with a faint light.

"If I remember my detection charms right," the Assistant said, "that should be a lot brighter for a wizard."

Severus stared at the dim light even as he said, "Mr Lyle, why aren't you currently on the Hogwarts Express?"

There was a pause, then: "That's what I was hoping to talk to Harry about. I'm in a bit of trouble. Can I please come in?"

"You want me to check he's really who he says he is?" the Assistant asked. "I need to go see my dealer anyway."

Severus scowled at him. "You have time to get clean now."

"Only if you make me… Master."

Severus scowl deepened, but he didn't say anything more about it. He flicked his wand and the light went out, then without another word he turned and left the library. The Assistant got up and followed him through the house to the front door, down the driveway and to the gates. Tyler Lyle stood on the other side of them, looking pale, tugging up the collar of his turtleneck jumper. He eyed the two adults warily.

"Can I come in?"

Severus looked through the gates, making no motion to open them. "Do you know who lives here?"

Tyler's brow furrowed. "Of course. Draco Malfoy."

"If you're familiar with him, you must be aware of his family's attitudes towards Muggles."

"So?"

"So there are charms on this gate that detect whether a guest is a wizard or not. According to them, you're a squib. Tyler Lyle isn't a squib, but he has been missing for months, so who are you really?"

The boy grit his teeth, pale cheeks flushing, and tugged at his collar again. "I _am_ Tyler. I just…"

He tugged on his collar again. The Assistant had a sudden thought. He used a bit of magic to make the boy stumble forward, reached through the gate, and yanked down his collar. His throat was covered with bite marks in various stages of healing.

"That's why he's a squib," the Assistant said as Tyler jerked back and pulled the collar up again. "He's been fed on repeatedly by a vampire. Too often in too little time and it renders a wizard powerless."

"Where's the vampire now?" Severus asked.

"Dead," Tyler said, glancing up to see their reactions to that. "She didn't tie me up properly this morning. I opened the curtains on her and then ran."

"And came here?"

"I didn't have anywhere else," Tyler admitted unhappily. "Marcus is dead. I wasn't going to my bitch of a step-mother, I know what she thinks of squibs and Muggles, and my so-called father would be just as bad. I read in the papers that Harry was living here and wasn't going back to Hogwarts and I just… I dunno. I thought maybe he could help me."

"Harry can't help anyone right now, Mr Lyle," Severus said, but he tapped his wand to the gates and they swung open. "You can come in, however. I'll see what I can do for you."

"Thanks, prof… oh, wait, um…"

"Mister Snape will do. Come on."

Tyler walked through, smiling gratefully. The Assistant passed him, going the other way.

"I assume you've got this, Severus. I've got business to do."

"I think I can handle one child, yes," Severus replied dryly, and clanged the gates shut behind him.

* * *

Tyler nervously touched the gun tucked into the back of his jeans as he followed Snape up the driveway. Even after Danielle showed him how to use it and told him, repeatedly, how to be careful in handling it, he still felt nervous. He could have killed someone with a wand, technically, if he wasn't now a squib, except he didn't know how. He knew the words of the Killing Curse, but he also knew there was more to it than that. Killing someone with a gun seemed a whole lot easier, which scared him as much as he was glad for it.

He dropped his hand from the weapon, climbing the steps to the front door of Malfoy Manor. It scared him, but he would do it. As soon as he saw Harry, he'd pull the gun out and shoot, just like Danielle taught him. That son of a bitch had killed his oldest friends, and then he'd had the nerve to spend a year pretending to still be Tyler's friend. Tyler might have been able to forgive Harry for the deaths if it wasn't for that. He knew Harry had been coerced into joining the Death Eaters and only did what Voldemort ordered to save Tyler's life, among others.

But to then spend the next year acting like he hadn't done anything wrong, to ask Tyler to have sex with his boyfriend and watch—twice—like he had the right to share such an intimacy… Tyler couldn't forgive that.

Snape took him to a drawing room and gestured for Tyler to take a seat. Tyler did so, feeling the gun press into his back, and looked around at the portraits on the walls before returning his gaze to Snape as the man settled in the chair opposite him.

"Did you want something to drink?" Snape asked curtly.

"Yeah, thanks."

"Tea?"

Tyler nodded. Snape summoned a house elf that brought them a tray with tea for Tyler and coffee for Snape, and once it left Snape looked at Tyler over his mug.

"Tell me what happened to you, Mr Lyle."

Tyler gulped his tea, burning his tongue, and stared into the cup. "There's not much to tell," he muttered. Snape looked irritated.

"How did you end up in the clutches of a vampire?"

"She was engaged to my dad fifty years ago. She kidnapped me after Marcus was killed."

"She's been holding you for two months?"

"Yes."

"Until this afternoon," Snape drawled, "when she decided to just let you waltz out."

"I told you, she didn't tie me up properly this morning," Tyler told him, trying to sound as earnest as possible. Snape had always had an unnerving ability to ferret out lies. "She would let me out to use the bathroom every morning before she went to bed for the day. This morning I got free."

"Why did she keep you alive all this time?"

"I don't know," Tyler snapped, not having to fake his annoyance, but hearing an unwilling fear in his voice, too. "So she could just keep feeding on me? An easy meal every day instead of hunting someone new. Look, I've spent months locked up and getting bitten every day, so often that I can't even do fucking magic anymore, why are you acting like I'm a bad guy?"

Snape watched him, expression unreadable. "You're not the only one that's had a difficult few months, Mr Lyle. I don't have the luxury of trusting people, especially not when they come knocking at the door asking after my son."

"You think _I'm_ going to hurt Harry?" Tyler said, putting as much outrage into his voice as he could manage. It wasn't hard; Snape might be right, but Tyler still had plenty of anger to share. "He's murdered people and I can't do magic—I don't even have a fucking wand anymore—but you think _I'm_ a threat to _him_?"

Snape didn't answer. He pressed a hand to his chest, fingers twitching slightly, then put his coffee mug aside and stood up. "Stay here."

"What?" Tyler said, but Snape just stalked out the drawing room. Tyler gaped after him, then snapped his mouth shut, looked around, and stood up. He pulled the gun out, looked it over, pulled the slide back to check again that there was a bullet in the chamber, even though he knew there would be. He'd checked it already a dozen times today.

He looked around at the portraits, wondered if any of them would help, decided they probably wouldn't. He went to the door Snape had exited through, peering out of it and checking the corridor. There was no sign of Snape. Tyler slipped out, the gun heavy in his hand, and moved down the corridor. He had no idea where to find Harry and he hadn't realised, before arriving this afternoon, how big Malfoy Manor was. It was a lot of space to search.

He passed three rooms before he found some stairs, looking into each of them but finding only an empty study, dining room, and sitting room. At the stairs, he paused, looking up them and then around. Did he search the ground floor some more or head up? What would Harry be doing? The papers reported that he wasn't returning to Hogwarts and they'd said he was injured, but that was weeks ago and they'd never actually specified what was wrong with him. Was Harry injured enough to be bed bound even now? Or was he somewhere else in the house? Maybe he was planning his next murder or the torture of more friends of friends.

The sound of voices from down the hall made his choice for him. He passed the stairs and continued along until he came to a partially open door that led into a library. He peered through the gap, couldn't see anyone, but heard Snape say softly, "Harry, Tyler Lyle is here. I have to get back to him. If you won't go back to your room, I'm going to call Pippin to sit with you, alright? Just in case you fall again."

A shiver of anticipation and hatred went through Tyler. Harry was here, just on the other side of these doors, close enough to kill. His fingers twitched on the gun.

Snape called for the house elf, gave it orders, then told Harry he'd be back soon and approached the doors. Tyler darted aside, tucking himself around the far corner. His heart pounded in his chest as he pressed himself to the wall, listening carefully as Snape left the library and pulled the door shut with a click. When his footsteps began moving away, Tyler cautiously looked around, watched Snape's retreat. Once he was out of sight, Tyler slipped back to the library door and slowly, quietly, opened it and entered.

He'd not been able to tell from his earlier peek, but the library was quite substantial. Not as large as the one at Hogwarts, but pretty respectable for a home library. Near Tyler's entry there was a couple of tables, one with books, quills, and parchment scattered across it, but Harry wasn't there. Tyler moved slowly forward, aware of every slight squeak of his trainers against the stone floor, wishing it was carpet.

He saw movement further ahead and jerked the gun up. It'd come from behind a bookshelf and he carefully edged forward, craning his head to see, he took another step—and there he was. Harry.

He was sat in a winged armchair, looking smaller than Tyler remembered him being, his black robes hanging too big on him. He had a notebook open on his lap and one hand resting on it, fingers running lightly over the page. His mouth was turned in a deep frown, twisting his scarred face into an even more grotesque visage.

Tyler gasped. He couldn't help it. This wasn't what he'd been expecting. He'd seen pictures in the _Daily Prophet_ of Execution Day, but the ones of Harry had been distant and somehow in his mind he hadn't associated that with the person who killed his friends. Always when he thought of the Harry he wanted to kill, he imagined Harry as he'd been at school. Comparatively healthy, his only scar the famous lightning bolt, his skill in wandwork unmatched. Harry had never been one for swaggering machismo, but he'd still always had something of an aura about him.

The papers said Harry had spent six weeks being tortured by Death Eaters, but Tyler had spent two months being abused by Danielle so he'd convinced himself that Harry couldn't possibly be worse off than himself. Tyler had _lost his magic_ ; how could anything Harry endured be as bad as that?

Seeing the frail, brutalised figure in front of him, he suddenly wondered if losing his magic was really as bad as all that.

Harry's head snapped up at the noise, turning towards him, his one blue eye unfocused as it settled somewhere to Tyler's right, the other covered by a simple black patch. Even with his face mutilated, the flash of fear was unmistakable, and Tyler's aim and conviction wavered. He'd come to kill a monster, not… not this.

"What is you doing?"

The high voice made Tyler jump and he spun about, gun fixing on the house elf then jerking down. He wasn't about to kill a perfectly innocent house elf.

The elf eyed the gun with unafraid ignorance then lifted her large eyes to Tyler's face. "You is supposed to be with Mister Snape."

Tyler licked his lips, didn't answer, turned back towards Harry. The shock of seeing him was lessening and the fear had faded from Harry's face now. Tyler steadied his grip on the gun and fixed its aim.

So what if Harry had been brutally tortured? It was nothing more than he deserved for everything he'd done. Whatever his appearance, whatever he'd gone through, it was no reason for Tyler to falter. Harry was a murderer. He deserved to die.

He licked his lips again, shifted his finger.

"This is for Charlie and Alex," he said, and pulled the trigger.

* * *

As Harry's physical recovery progressed, he started to move about on his own and Severus had calibrated the charms on the pendant to be more sensitive. Mostly Harry only moved between his bed and the bathroom, but Severus wanted to be aware if he ventured further and this afternoon he finally had. Even with a guest, Severus had to go check on him immediately. Given that he was going _to_ Harry, he hadn't thought anything of leaving Tyler alone in the drawing room, something he regretted later.

He found Harry in the library, collapsed on the floor by the table the Assistant had been working at lately, books and notes scattered around him. Severus came within inches of picking Harry up before he stopped himself. Even his approach had made Harry flinch, but he'd pushed himself up to a sitting position.

"Harry, it's your dad. Are you alright?"

Harry nodded jerkily.

"Do you need help?"

A shake of the head. Harry rose up off the floor, but it was as if a harness was pulling him up by the torso. He lifted straight up, drifted down the library to the reading corner, and settled into one of the winged armchairs.

"Why are you out of your room? You haven't got enough strength yet to walk about too much."

Harry said nothing, just curled his foot under him and settled into the chair. Severus bit back a sigh, not wanting to show his frustration to Harry. The fact that Harry had left his room should be taken as a sign of progress; it wouldn't help for him to know how difficult Severus found it that the boy wouldn't speak to him.

He also had another child to deal with right now, even if it wasn't his own.

"Harry, Tyler Lyle is here." He paused for a reaction that didn't come, then went on, "I have to get back to him. If you won't go back to your room, I'm going to call Pippin to sit with you, alright? Just in case you fall again."

He didn't expect a response to that and didn't get one, but Harry twitched when Pippin answered Severus' call. Narcissa had left the elf to serve Harry, Severus, and the Assistant while she was at Hogwarts, having all their elves at her beck and call. The Assistant tended to fetch things himself, and had said Severus was free to use Dobby, but Severus preferred to rely on an elf who wasn't working for money. Severus needed to know that those working with Harry right now were trustworthy, and an elf sworn to obey Narcissa's very careful commands was more trustworthy than a nutcase whose current primary employer was a squib, regardless of what the Assistant said of Severus' prejudices.

He told the elf to stay with Harry and fetch him if there was a problem, then headed back towards the drawing room, rubbing at the itching scars were his ear used to be as his thoughts turned to the problem of Tyler. Something was off about the boy, but Severus wasn't sure what yet.

Some part of his story about the vampire was false; it was clearly true that he had been victimised repeatedly in recent months, and Severus had read that repeated feedings in a short time could render a wizard powerless, although he'd never actually heard reliable stories of it happening, but that didn't make all of it true. There was something suspicious about the fact that Tyler had turned up on the same day that Narcissa and Draco left Malfoy Manor.

When he reached the drawing room and found it empty, he knew his instincts were right. He spun on his heel and ran back the way he'd come, wand in hand and terror in his heart. The fact that Harry was perfectly capable of defending himself, and currently defending himself against even the slightest unexpected touch, didn't ease his fear. Too much had happened to Harry over the years for Severus not to be afraid for him.

He was five feet from the library when he heard the shot. It was a bang louder than most spells and for one crazy moment he had the wild thought that a car had backfired in the middle of the Malfoy library.

A scream followed the bang and Severus crashed through the door to find Tyler in midair. He didn't spasm like those under the Cruciatus Curse, but Severus didn't think he himself had the one time Harry tortured him, either. Those few seconds of agony at his son's hands had been more painful than any other torture he'd endured. Even the Dark Lord's Cruciatus Curse didn't strike so sharply.

Pippin cowered behind a bookcase. Severus passed her, wand out but not aimed at anything.

"Harry, put him down!" Severus shouted over the noise, moving further into the room. Tyler went silent, but his mouth remained open in a scream, only the sound ceasing. "Harry, stop it, put him down, right now."

"He tried to kill me. Do you approve of that, _daddy_?"

Startled was the first thing Severus felt; he hadn't heard Harry speak that much since they last saw each other in June.

It was quickly followed by fury when he saw the gun on the floor beneath Tyler and a bullet by the leg of the table, and then guilt as he realised that he'd let an attempted murderer into this house to kill his son.

And then, at that last word, ice cold terror doused all his other emotions, because there was only one person who had ever called him 'daddy'—the voice in Harry's head.

The voice that the Assistant said belonged to Tom Riddle.

He suddenly desperately wished the Assistant was with him. He didn't want to face this—his son, possessed by Voldemort—alone.

Tyler dropped suddenly, hitting the floor with a gasp, the sound coming back in a rush. Severus vanished the gun by his arm, in case he tried to go for it even now, but Tyler just sobbed once and then gave a wordless cry of pain and protest as his hands were wrenched behind him. Rope bound around his wrists, and then his ankles, and a gag appeared in his mouth. He looked up at Severus pleadingly, squirming slightly, but Severus had no sympathy for him and absolutely no intention of freeing him.

He moved to the table by Harry and bent, picking up the spent bullet. It was mushroomed at the nose, as if it'd hit something, but Severus could see no damage to the walls or furniture. Where the hell did a kid like Tyler even get a gun? Especially as Severus recalled reading that the Muggle government banned handguns earlier in the year.

"This bullet—what did it hit?" he asked. He wasn't sure what else to say. He needed to figure out how to deal with Riddle.

"Me," Riddle said. The translation of Nyneve's journal was on the floor and he held out his hand as it flew to him.

"What are you doing?"

Riddle didn't answer, just flicked through to the pages with the soul transfer spell. Severus had no idea how he knew which page to go to but he didn't speak. He wanted to demand answers, but he knew he had to be careful with this. He didn't want to alert Riddle to the fact he knew about him or Merlin only knew what Riddle would do to him.

Riddle ran his fingers lightly over the page and, looking closer, Severus saw the lettering was slightly raised. Riddle frowned as he felt it, mouth twisting into a deep scowl, then made a noise of irritation. He pressed his hand flat to the book, then a dull droning voice said, "Soul Transfer Spell," and read out a long spell that seemed to be mingled Old English and Latin, at least to Severus' uneducated ear.

"Inscribe the target body with binding, guidance, and containment symbols," the voice droned on, "such as those used in Grecian rituals. Use ank eggy."

Severus had been sidling closer and was able to see that the apparently random and nonsensical last phrase was the reading spell speaking the Assistant's note in the margin: 'Use Anc. Egy.'

"The spell only works for living persons; it doesn't pull souls from the afterlife. I have to investigate further—"

The spell stopped, silence filling the library, then it reread the spell. Riddle played it several more times, speaking along with it until he had the pronunciation correct. Once he did, he lifted his hands out the way and a large book appeared on his lap. Severus was able to glimpse the title— _The Complete Dictionary of Ancient and Modern Greek Ritual Magic_ —before it fell open and the pages began turning themselves.

Severus glanced from the book to Tyler, still bound on the floor and wriggling vainly to get free, then to Riddle. He didn't need Legilimency to guess what Riddle was doing, and he didn't disagree with it. He might have objected to Riddle's target if Tyler hadn't just tried to kill Riddle—to kill Harry—but he couldn't argue with the plan itself. Riddle was planning to take himself out of Harry's body; Severus had to support that.

He glanced again at Tyler, hesitating because this was one of his former students, but he clenched his hand on the bullet. This sixteen year old had tried to shoot his son; Severus wouldn't pity him.

"You need Ancient Egyptian."

Riddle stilled, head tilting slightly towards Severus.

" 'Ank Eggy' is Ancient Egypt," Severus explained. "It's a sidenote from the Assistant."

For a moment, there was no response, then the Greek book disappeared and another replaced it.

"You're helping," Riddle said, tone vaguely questioning.

"I can't blame you for wanting to get out of that body," Severus said, completely truthfully.

"You don't care if I possess him?"

"He tried to kill you, so no, not really."

"Will you help?"

Severus looked at Tyler, who'd stopped struggling to look between them, wide-eyed and afraid. Severus never took his gaze off him even as he answered Riddle.

"Only if you really need my help. I won't stop you, but I hurt enough people when I was working for the Dark Lord that I don't want to harm anyone else I don't have to."

Riddle made a soft noise that might have been a snort of derision, but he didn't say anything. He set the book to opening itself like the last, coming to the section on binding runes, that droning voice reading out from the book. Amidst descriptions, history, and usage of the runes, it would attempt to read the runes itself and end up making a mangled, twisted noise like a dog choking.

Severus became aware, in a way he couldn't really vocalise, that the Assistant was back. Some feeling made him look towards the still open door just in time to see the Assistant appear. He didn't enter the room, just lingered in the doorway, eying Tyler and then lifting his gaze to Severus. Severus held up the bullet between thumb and forefinger, and the Assistant sighed silently. He didn't enter the room still, perhaps responding to Severus' desire to stay out. If things went bad, he wanted the Assistant to be a surprise back up.

Severus slowly paced the library, fingers clenching around the bullet in his hand. On the floor, Tyler began squirming again, shouting behind his gag, until he suddenly fell unconscious. Severus glanced at Riddle, but he gave no reaction as the book's droning shifted to talking about containment and guidance runes.

When the book finally fell silent suddenly, Severus turned to Riddle. One of the runes on the page was raised and Riddle ran his fingers over it, while a knife appeared in his other hand. The book lifted off Riddle's lap to float nearby and Riddle slipped off the chair, kneeling on the floor with a grimace.

"Are you alright?" Severus asked, forgetting for a moment that he wasn't talking to his son.

Riddle didn't deign to answer in any case, just shuffled closer to Tyler. Tyler's shirt and jumper disappeared and his wrists unbound, letting him lie out flat, still unconsious. The book of runes settled down beside Riddle and he touched his hand to it, other hand holding the knife over Tyler's bare chest. He let go of the knife and it remained upright, but the tip lowered until it pierced Tyler's skin.

Severus lifted his gaze up over Riddle's head to look at the Assistant. The Assistant caught his gaze and mouthed, 'Transfer?' Severus nodded, and felt a little less apprehensive of the whole thing when the Assistant smiled grimly. Severus might not want Riddle in his son's body, and he might be extremely pissed off with Tyler Lyle right then, but he still felt some guilt at standing by as a piece of Lord Voldemort possessed a teenage boy.

Of course, given the Assistant's dubious history, Severus probably shouldn't take comfort from his approval.

"Is it accurate?"

Riddle's voice drew Severus' attention back to him. There was a rune now carved in Tyler's chest and Severus crouched, looking between it and the picture in the book.

"They're the same."

The book changed page, the knife moved, and Riddle carved two more runes into Tyler, checking again with Severus to ensure they were accurate. Tyler didn't wake during the whole process, but once it was done and Riddle moved the book aside, he came awake as abruptly as he'd gone unconscious. He looked around wildly, twitched, and then started thrashing his head even as the rest of him remained motionless—magically pinned down, Severus could guess. He was still gagged, but it didn't stop him screaming into the cloth, and tears leaked from his eyes, his expression terrified.

Severus touched his wand to the boy's cheek and Tyler went abruptly still, only his chest moving rapidly as he breathed hard.

"Getting worked up will not help things, Lyle," Severus told him, surprised at how steady and emotionless his own voice was. "If you weren't prepared to deal with the consequences, you shouldn't have tried to kill someone."

Tyler didn't respond, just flicked his gaze between Severus, the wand, and Riddle. Riddle had summoned the notebook translation to him and made it read aloud once more, then set it aside and placed one hand flat over the guidance rune carved just below Tyler's ribcage. Tyler twitched and whined, more tears spilling down his face, and Severus felt fresh apprehension coil in his gut. He glanced up at the Assistant, who nodded firmly and made no move to interfere.

Severus really hoped he wouldn't regret this.

"Don't touch him," Riddle said to Severus, who drew back slightly, and then Riddle, careful about his pronunciation but not too slowly, spoke the spell from the notebook. Severus watched carefully, unsure if he'd see anything actually happen or not.

There were no obvious signs of magic, but as Riddle came to the end of the spell, both he and Tyler stiffened. It looked as if they would have a seizure, but then they both jerked as if electrocuted, and Riddle fell backwards and did begin seize while Tyler relaxed.

Severus conjured a pillow under Harry's head—he hoped it was Harry now—too used to his seizures to be largely worried about him, except that it could exacerbate the brain damage from torture. In any case, he couldn't do anything about it, so he turned his attention to Tyler.

He'd gone stiff, twitching again, and Severus might have thought he was seizing too, beneath whatever spell was keeping him immobilised, but his face was too expressive. His earlier fear was all gone, replaced by confusion, frustration, anger, and then fear again. Taking a chance, Severus vanished the gag.

"I can't move," he said immediately. His voice was different now. Not drastically, but just noticeable. If Severus hadn't heard Tyler speak an hour ago, he might have thought the change was just his own memory and time making him sound different. "Why the fuck can't I move? I can't release the spell!"

"Harry's magic wasn't yours," the Assistant said, finally entering the room, carefully moving around Harry's seizing figure to kneel by Tyler. "Magic is tied to souls as much as bodies; outside of Harry's body, you can't use his particular brand of magic."

For a moment, Tyler—Riddle—stared at the Assistant, then tried, "What are you talking about? I am Harry."

"No, you're not. You haven't been since Execution Day."

Severus' gazed snapped to him. "You knew?"

Tyler's eyes shifted to Severus and his face twisted into a pleading expression. "You don't believe him, do you, daddy? I'm—"

"Don't call me that," Severus snapped, and only years of seeing that face in his classroom kept Severus from hexing Riddle right then. He looked to the Assistant. "You knew all along that it wasn't really Harry?"

"No, just since he asked me to translate Nyneve's journal. Harry's a historian; he'd never ask me to finish his work for him."

"It's not like I could do it myself," Riddle objected. "I'm—I was—blind."

The Assistant shook his head. "There are ways around that. Harry might have asked me for help, but he wouldn't just leave it all in my hands. You're Tom Riddle. Not even just half of Tom Riddle anymore, either, are you? You absorbed the Horcruxes, and the piece in the Dark Lord's body."

Severus felt the blood drain from his face. "He what? How do you know?"

"For one, that transfer ritual wouldn't work with an incomplete soul," the Assistant answered. "Soul magics very rarely do. That besides, Nagini vanished from where I locked her after Execution Day, and so have the diadem and cup. I haven't checked on the Dark Lord's body, but I'm willing to bet that's gone, too, or is at least empty."

Severus looked back down at Riddle. Somehow it was more terrifying to know that this teenage form held Voldemort in his entirety rather than just a portion of him. Perhaps because it held the piece that Severus had worked for and betrayed, and not just some part that he still thought of as the voice in Harry's head.

The Assistant placed his hand on the Egyptian rune for binding that was carved on the right side of Riddle's chest, and Riddle twitched and gasped. When the Assistant pulled his hand away, the rune was healed to a fresh scar, as were the others.

"That'll stop him hopping bodies again," the Assistant said, looking pleased with himself. "Another indicator that you're not Harry—his runic knowledge is good enough he'd have known not to use an Egyptian binding rune."

"What do you mean?" Riddle demanded. "You said to use Egyptian, and I know their binding runes are more powerful than the ancient Greek."

"Yes, they are, which means they'll keep you trapped inside that body for eternity, especially now I've enchanted that rune so you can't cut through it. You're stuck there, Riddle. Get used to it."

The cessation of movement in the corner of Severus' eye drew his attention to Harry, who'd stopped seizing. Severus realised he didn't know what Harry was going to be like when he came around again. The person he'd been interacting with for the past month wasn't Harry, and he had no idea how the real Harry would be dealing with what had happened to him. Severus needed to give him his full attention, not worry about Riddle.

He looked at the Assistant. "Can you kill Riddle without killing Lyle?"

With no indication whether he was repulsed or bothered at the prospect of murdering Tyler, the Assistant answered simply, "No."

Severus looked down at the boy between them, suddenly faced with the decision of whether or not to murder him.


	56. Chapter 56

**Chapter 56**

Consciousness came first to Harry, but awareness came slower. For weeks he'd been hardly aware of his own body, happily sacrificing control of himself to Riddle when it let him ignore the slow recovery from their torture. When he wasn't in control, he didn't have to think. He just sort of… existed, floating in the back of his own mind, distantly aware of what was going on around him but paying it no attention.

Without Riddle, it was harder to let go like that. He knew, instinctively, that he could if he wanted to. He could remain buried deep within himself and forget there even was a world outside himself.

 _(He wouldn't go join that other piece of himself that was somewhere else altogether. He wasn't Riddle and felt no urge to rebuild himself, and as long as he didn't then the broken pieces of his soul would reject being close to each other.)_

But without Riddle as a buffer, it was harder to ignore his body and the world around him. There was no one else to decide whether they should respond to people, to deal with bodily functions, to face the fact that what he did or didn't do had an effect on the people around him.

There was also a silence in his head that hadn't been there for a long time. He'd long grown used to Riddle's presence, as a voice or hallucination, and to have him gone was more distressing than losing his sight. He simply couldn't bare to be alone with his own thoughts.

It was that which finally forced him to awareness an indeterminate amount of time after his seizure ended. He'd been aware of what Riddle had been doing, watching—listening, rather—over his metaphorical shoulder, but the usual post-seizure fuzziness and his own reluctance to become active had left the events after Riddle's ritual unclear.

When he came to, he was in a bed, presumably the same one he'd been using since coming to Malfoy Manor. Over the taste of a mouth freshening charm, the room had that indistinct scent of a room that was so familiar the smell became something in the background, even the scent of the fire burning barely tickling his nose. It was comfortably warm, but unpleasantly quiet. He could hear rain hitting the windows, but inside there was just the crackling of the fire.

Except there, just faintly nearby, the sound of someone breathing, and he realised there was a slight dip to the bed on the left side—someone leaning on it, maybe.

It couldn't be Draco, he recalled. Draco had gone, abandoned him for Hogwarts. He had to swallow down a thick ball of fear and jealousy at that. He couldn't remember if anyone had spoken to him about Hogwarts, but he knew he couldn't go there.

Selfishly, he wanted Draco here with him, that one person he trusted above all others, but it would be unfair to make him miss out on his last year of schooling just for Harry. Not that it was _that_ selfish. Harry was going to die in seven months time; Draco could go to school next year, it wasn't like it was unheard of for the occasional student to repeat a year, or to miss one and take it late.

Except Draco didn't know that Harry was going to die, and however much Harry wanted Draco with him, he didn't want to admit that truth to him. Anyway, he might not die. He had his Horcrux and that piece of soul that was off somewhere else, and he could still Wish the hellhounds dead—all of them, just like Snape had suggested… he might still survive.

He dragged his mind away from that, unwilling to think about it. In the darkness, only the feel of bed around him, he found himself suddenly desperate for something familiar to hold onto. Without even thinking about it, he Wished for Kiwi and hugged her tightly to his chest, his mind envisioning her purple fur as he felt it under his fingers.

He drew it up and lifted his head so he could press his mouth to the top off her head, old childish instincts driving him to whisper, "I love you," and hearing back the always comforting soft voice of his mother's reply: "I love you, Harry."

Then he froze, hearing and feeling the figure by his bed shift, and Snape's voice said softly, "Harry?"

For a moment, Harry said nothing. He hadn't had to speak with anyone in weeks. The last time he had, it was only to scream for mercy that never came. It was tempting to say nothing now, but there was no one else to speak for him anymore and he could hear the almost desperate tone in Snape's voice. While Harry had been hiding, Snape had been thinking that Tom Riddle was his son; maybe he needed a reassurance that Harry was really Harry this time around.

Not that Harry was sure how to do that.

In the end, he wet his lips slightly and just said, "Dad."

He heard a soft exhale. "You're really you this time?"

"Yes." He wondered if he should apologise for not being him before, but he didn't feel bad for taking that time to himself, no matter what Riddle had used his body and magic for in the meantime.

"How are you feeling?" Snape asked, almost warily.

Harry considered that. Physically, he felt surprisingly okay. Some lingering post-seizure ache, but other than that he could be worse. He knew he'd been fed a steady regime of potions over the last month and Kirith had cast spells on him while he'd still been in Saint Mungo's, and still came to check on him regularly.

In terms of general strength, he wasn't quite as well as he used to be—he certainly couldn't manage climbing up and down all the stairs at Hogwarts day after day—but he'd regained the worst of the lost strength from lack of movement and chronic underfeeding. His hands were still bad—he couldn't make a fist, and just barely had the strength to use a knife and fork. Kirith said they might improve a little with time and physical therapy, but he'd never fully recover.

There were the scars, too. They didn't affect him, physically, but he'd like to be rid of them—the runes of separation, expulsion, relinquishment, proffering… all marks meant to give up his magic to Voldemort's spells. None of them had worked, not even when he was released from his chains, which he knew he had been because they would force sleeping potions on him occasionally and he would wake up with new marks on his skin.

Riddle hadn't been able to stand having anyone else cream dittany over the scars, and hadn't bothered to himself, but Harry wanted them gone. Those, at least, he could get rid of. Voldemort hadn't used Cyrus the Great's knife or any other enchanted weapon, not wanting the magic of it to interfere with his own spells, so the runes should fade away, but the one on his face wouldn't. Macnair had made sure of that.

He wasn't sure about the ones on his wrists. They'd been made by a curse, not a knife, and he knew curse scars were dependant on which spell caused them. He could only use the dittany and hope for the best.

So physically, yes, he was okay. He would recover, if slowly. Mentally and emotionally, however… he wasn't sure. His mind had been torn apart under Voldemort's torture just as much as his body, and Riddle's absence didn't help. It was hard to put into words. His thoughts were still clear—he thought his thoughts were still clear—but he felt like his mind had been ripped into a dozen different pieces and he had no idea how to put it back together.

He was afraid, too—of the dark and what, or who, was in it; of being alone, both physically and inside his own mind; of the possibility that all this, his freedom and everything that happened in the last month, was just a figment of his imagination, and any moment he'd wake up and back in chains; even of himself, because he might have killed eighty-three people in a single instant.

He had no idea who'd been in control of his body and magic in those moments after he was released from his chains on Execution Day. He'd been so afraid that killing all the Death Eaters in response was entirely plausible, and his minimal control on his newly released magic could easily have spread death to even those who hadn't actually hurt him.

But while he'd been afraid in the wake of torture, Riddle had been angry, and he was always more inclined to violence than Harry. Riddle would absolutely have killed everyone who was so much as a _potential_ threat. Only the fact that Lucius was still alive tipped the argument in Harry's favour; Riddle wouldn't have cared to spare him, even for Draco's sake.

It really could have been either of them who'd killed those people. Maybe it was both.

If it had been Harry, it scared him—scared him that he would do such a thing, and that, even now, he didn't regret it because it had been necessary. The Death Eaters and their loyalists had too much power. The Ministry had arrested them before, but Voldemort had simply broken them out again a decade later. They couldn't risk that again. Executing them was the best option.

"Harry?"

He jumped.

"I'm sorry," Snape said, and Harry could hear the frustration in his voice even when he tried to keep it soft. "I didn't mean to startle you. You had a seizure, I wanted to make sure you're alright."

"I'm okay. Where's your hand?"

"Beg pardon?"

With Kiwi clutched under one arm, Harry pulled his other free of the covers and held it in the direction of Snape's voice. "Your hand. Please?"

There was a moment's pause, then he felt the soft touch of fingers on his palm. He couldn't help flinching slightly, but when Snape started to withdraw Harry grabbed him. His grip was weak, but he curled his fingers as tight as he could and felt Snape's cautiously curl around his own hand.

It calmed him. He had the bed and Kiwi, but in the darkness he felt like there could be anything waiting to get him—or anyone. He felt adrift in the world, his shattered mind unable to cling to anything, and it did nothing to ease his fear. Having Snape's hand in his own was grounding, slightly. It was confirmation that there was more than just himself and a voice, gave him something real to focus on.

"Do you remember what happened?" Snape asked softly.

"Tyler tried to kill me. Riddle… where is he? Is he in here?"

"No," Snape said slowly, warily. "Harry, do you realise he isn't just the piece from inside you anymore? He's the Dark Lord in his entirety."

Harry wanted to say that didn't matter, that Riddle had been with him for years, that he'd been Harry's only source of comfort for those horrific six weeks, that he was Harry's friend—but Riddle wasn't just Riddle anymore. Harry still remembered that nasty streak he developed after absorbing the locket Horcrux. Now Riddle had that piece of himself that hated Harry and wanted him dead. Harry couldn't be sure that Riddle as he was now didn't want to kill him.

Clutching Kiwi tighter, he said unhappily, "I know."

"Then you realise that he has to die."

Harry's breath hitched. He hadn't been thinking that—hadn't let himself think it. He knew it was true; Voldemort was all in one piece and could finally be killed once and for all… but part of that Voldemort had been sharing a body and mind with Harry for years. Harry had liked him. He knew it was the absolute truth now; his thoughts were his own again, uninfluenced by Riddle's presence, and he still liked him. He didn't want to have to kill him, it would be like killing one of his friends.

It _would_ be killing one of his friends, because Riddle was inside Tyler and Harry didn't know if he could kill him without killing Tyler, too. Not that he could call Tyler much of a friend when Tyler had tried to kill him first.

He didn't even know why Tyler had done that. Did he resent Harry for being a Death Eater? He wasn't sure if he'd ever restored his friends' memories of the night he was marked. Had Tyler found out what Harry had done as a Death Eater? Did he hate Harry for the murder of his Muggle friend?

Harry could understand a revenge killing, even if he didn't appreciate being the target. It wouldn't be very fair of him to retaliate to a retaliation; wasn't that where the whole concept of 'an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind' came from? Harry didn't have any eyes to spare as it was, and it wasn't like Tyler had succeeded. Of course, if he had, Harry wouldn't be in any position to retaliate anyway…

Whatever the case, he didn't want to kill his friend, or former friend. He didn't want to kill Riddle, either, even though he should. Maybe he'd change his mind if he actually spoke to him…

"Where is he?" he asked Snape again. He didn't let go of Snape's hand or Kiwi as he pushed himself to sit up, the pillows arranging themselves behind him so he could lean comfortably against the headboard.

"Will you kill him?"

"I don't know."

"Harry, he's the Dark Lord. You cannot let him live!"

"I want to see—to speak to him," Harry said. "Tell me where he is or I'll bring him here."

There was a moment of silence and Snape's hand twitched in Harry's grip, then he gave a frustrated growl and said, "He's in Lucius' dungeon."

Harry shuddered. He couldn't help it. He'd been down there. He hardly remembered it, those few days in a different room, knowing he'd been moved only because there was more space around him, colder and echoingly empty. There had been no pain, because Voldemort knew by then that destroying Harry meant destroying his own Horcruxes, and he'd even stopped trying to steal Harry's magic by then, but for Harry it was all a half-remembered dream.

But it was enough to leave him afraid and he knew Riddle would hate to be stuck down there again, so without even thinking about it he Wished Riddle into the bedroom with him. He didn't hear it, but he heard Snape jump, snatching his hand away from Harry, and a _swish_ of air, then from another direction there was the sound of movement and Riddle's voice cried, " _Don't!_ "

It was hissed in Parseltongue, but the fear was palpable. Harry knew that fear, the terror of having a wand pointed at you and knowing the person on the other end had nothing but harm in mind, whilst you were powerless to fight back.

Snape's wand was on his lap before Harry even realised what he was doing.

"Harry! Don't ever take my wand."

He felt the air shift as Snape reached for his wand and cringed away, snatching the wand into his own hand and holding it out, away from Snape's reach.

"Harry, what are you doing?"

" _Harry,_ " he heard Riddle hiss in Parseltongue, still afraid, " _they've put those cuffs on me, just like Dumbledore's; free me._ "

Harry almost did. The Wish was half made, but he stopped before it fully formed. His own fear of magic suppression and knowing Riddle disliked it just as much made him want to free him, but the practical part of his mind spoke up before he did it. However much he wanted this to be just Riddle, he couldn't let himself forget it was Voldemort, too. He didn't think Riddle had Harry's own brand of power—he'd never have let himself get cuffed if he had—but he was still someone to be cautious with.

" _Harry, get me free._ "

Especially when he gave orders like that.

"Harry, please, give me back my wand."

Snape's voice was calmer, but with an undercurrent of impatience. He hadn't moved again.

"Don't point it at him," Harry said, drawing his arm in but not handing the wand back yet. "You mustn't point it at him, alright?"

"Why shouldn't I? He's dangerous."

"I'm powerless!" Riddle yelled, and then when Harry flinched he lowered his voice. "I'm powerless. I'm no threat. You've no right to point your wand at me."

"Promise," Harry said to Snape. "Promise not to use it against him. He's afraid."

"I am not," Riddle instantly snapped.

"That would be more believable if you weren't cowering against the wall," Snape said, then: "Very well. I won't aim my wand at him unless he make a threatening move against me or you. Will that suffice?"

It would do. Harry held the wand out and left his hand extended even after Snape took the wand. Snape's hand settled in his again and Harry clutched it, grateful Snape had realised what he wanted without Harry having to say it.

"Kill him and be done with it. Harry."

"He won't kill me," Riddle said quickly but with conviction. "He won't want to kill his old friend. He won't want to kill _me_."

"You _tortured_ him," Snape spat.

" _I_ didn't! I had to suffer that torture, too!" Riddle's voice shook and he had to take a steadying breath. "I am not Lord Voldemort. I'm Riddle. I'm influenced far more by what I got from Harry than anything that came from the shred of Lord Voldemort that you know. Harry, you know that."

"Tom Riddle became Lord Voldemort," the Assistant's voice interjected, startling Harry so badly the windows smashed. A gust of chill wind blew through the room and rain splashed onto something below the window—chest of drawers, perhaps—until Harry Wished it fixed.

"Don't sneak up on me," he said, voice trembling too much for it to come out as the admonishment he'd intended. He dropped Snape's hand and clutched Kiwi with both arms, his fear of harm overwhelming his need to be grounded.

"Sorry," the Assistant's voice came, repentant.

"I know better," Riddle answered the Assistant. "I've seen where Lord Voldemort ends up. This whole discussion is pointless; if any of you wanted me dead, you'd have done it by now. But you don't care, do you, Assistant? And you, Snape, you can't bring yourself to do it as long as I look like this."

"I'll do it if I have to."

"But you'd rather Harry do it. Do you think it's better for him to have Tyler's death on his conscience than you? How typical," Riddle sneered. "You clearly haven't changed since you left him to rot with the Dursleys."

"You—!" That one word was so full of hatred and fury that Harry could easily envision Snape's expression, but then the terror which had started to fade after the Assistant's arrival flared back through Harry's heart as Snape said, " _Avada_ —"

Harry Wished for his wand again, felt it drop onto his lap and reached for it with one hand, heard a soft sigh of relief from Riddle, who evidently hadn't expected his goading to push Snape that far.

"Harry—" Snape began, but Harry interrupted him.

"No one kills him." That moment of terror when Snape began the Killing Curse was enough to decide him; he couldn't manage without Riddle, not right now. Maybe in future, when he was used to the silence in his head and less afraid of everything…

"Harry, you can't—"

"He lives," Harry said, voice unwavering even as he clutched Kiwi tighter. "I need him."

"You don't need the monster that _tortured_ you."

"That wasn't—" Harry and Riddle both objected, but Snape spoke over them.

"He possessed you for years. I heard some of the things he said to you while he was still the voice in your head. You cannot trust him."

"I need him," Harry said again, stubborn and desperate at the same time. "You don't get it. He was all I had and I need him now. You can't take him away from me. I won't let you."

"Severus, it might—" the Assistant began.

"Shut up! What if Draco came back?" Snape asked, and pressed on when Harry's breath caught. "If Draco came back from Hogwarts to stay with you, would you kill Riddle then?"

Would he? If there was anyone who would be a better comfort than Riddle…

"That's not fair on Draco," Riddle said, and kept talking even when Snape snarled at him to keep quiet. "He's got one last year at Hogwarts; it's not very fair to ask him to sacrifice it just for Harry's sake."

Something Harry had thought himself.

"Draco stays at Hogwarts," Harry said, and heard Snape snarl angrily.

"Fine," he snapped. "Can I have my wand back now?"

Harry levitated it in the direction of his voice. He assumed he got it right because he heard the flap of Snape's robes and then his footsteps retreating from the room.

"Take these cuffs off me now," Riddle ordered Harry, who heard him stand and approach the bed.

Instead of doing it, Harry turned his head towards where the Assistant's voice had come from. He hadn't heard him leave, but he hadn't heard him arrive, either, so he asked, "Assistant?"

"Yeah?"

"Can he do magic like me?"

"No. He doesn't currently have a wand, either, but he might learn to do a bit of wandless magic. Are you aware Tyler became a squib?"

Harry shook his head. If that had come up while Riddle was in control, it slipped by Harry. More worrying—"I didn't know a wizard could become a squib."

"It's a rarity. He's been fed on repeatedly to the brink of death by a vampire. In witches and wizards, their magic works so hard to keep them alive that that becomes all it can do and they stop being able to do spells and the like."

That was a horrifying concept to Harry. It made his brush with Gabriel Valentine at New Years all that more terrifying.

"Anyway," the Assistant continued, "it means there's no real telling how powerful Riddle there will be. His soul should bring its own magic, but Tyler's state will affect him, especially if Tyler regains any control over himself."

"He won't," Riddle said assuredly. "He's not as strong willed as Harry. Now get these cuffs off me."

Harry did so, asking as he did, "Can you read Tyler's thoughts like you did me?"

"Of course, why do you ask? Move over so I can sit."

Harry shifted and felt Riddle climb onto the bed next to him. He didn't sit close enough that they touched, but he didn't object when Harry asked for his hand, though he did ask why he wanted it.

"I just need someone to hold onto," Harry said. "Why did he kill try to kill us? Was it revenge for his friend? The Muggle girl?"

"To kill you, technically. He thinks you killed the Stones, too. Are you planning to stand there all day?"

Harry assumed this was directed at the Assistant, because his voice replied, "I'll take a seat if you're staying here for any length of time."

"You can _go_ ," Riddle replied.

"Can't," the Assistant immediately threw back, and Harry heard him move this time. He crossed the room, there was the sound of chair legs scraping against the floor, then the soft noise of him sitting down. "I was ordered to keep an eye on you, so that's what I'm going to do."

"Ordered?" Harry said, but it was Riddle who answered him, disdain clear in his voice.

"Your daddy is his Master; he took the Animancupium. When did that happen?"

"Don't see that it's any concern of yours," the Assistant said, "except that you should be glad because I helped saved both of your lives."

"Thank you," Harry said, then turned his attention back to Riddle. "Tell me about Tyler."

"What's there to tell? He's a treacherous friend who tried to kill you."

"How did he end up with a vampire?"

Riddle sighed irritably, but it lacked any real annoyance and he answered. "Do you remember that vampire he met last summer? The one who attacked him?"

"That was engaged to his dad?"

"She hunted him down after Marcus' death, kidnapped him, and has been feeding on him ever since. She gave him the gun and put him up to trying to kill you. Those Muggles you killed were her family; she's been looking for revenge since last summer. She was at the vampires' home on New Years to that end; that's when she realised it was you. Apparently she smelled your blood when Gabriel Valentine fed on you and recognised it as some that was splashed when that girl attacked you."

Harry clutched Kiwi tighter, sinking back in the pillows, remembering the feel of Charlie's nails gouging his cheeks. He didn't feel the guilt as strongly as he used to, but it was still there, curling beneath a simmering fear at being hunted by a vampire.

"We ought to deal with her," Riddle added. He sounded nonchalant enough, but his fingers tightened slightly around Harry's hand. "She'll try to come after us if we don't."

"After Harry," the Assistant corrected amiably.

"She'll come for me too now I'm possessing Tyler," Riddle shot back. "You should kill her, Harry."

"Not for nothing, but she hasn't actually done you any harm."

"She gave Tyler a gun and sent him to kill him."

"Tyler's choice," the Assistant countered. "As soon as he was beyond her reach and out in daylight, he could have done anything. He didn't have to come here, so that's on him, not her."

"He—"

"I killed her family," Harry interrupted, his voice as firm as it had been when he decreed Riddle wouldn't be killed. "I won't kill her, too, unless she attacks and I have to defend myself. I've killed enough people."

* * *

When Danielle set out for revenge, she considered killing Harry Evans' family. He'd killed her family, it made sense for her to kill his, but her honour wouldn't let her. Evans was the one that murdered innocents; killing his family as he'd killed hers would be lowering herself to his level.

That besides, at the outset, she hadn't thought Evans had much in the way of family. James Potter was recently revealed as alive, but then it came that he wasn't even Evans' father and his real father actually was, recently, dead. There was no one else except some Muggles, but if the newspapers were to be believed they'd treated Evans badly and he had no love for them. Killing them would be no revenge.

Now, however, not only was Snape alive, but Tyler revealed that Evans also had a grandmother tucked away somewhere in a carehome and a rude great-aunt. Danielle knew she couldn't get to Snape; like Evans, he was cowering behind the protective enchantments of Malfoy Manor. The grandmother and great-aunt, however…

When dawn came on the second of September and Tyler hadn't returned, she knew his mission had failed. He could have died succeeding in his mission, but Evans' death wouldn't go unremarked. Not even Snape could keep Evans' death a secret from the wizarding world. That there was no news of it meant Evans was still alive.

It was only then that she really considered going after the grandmother and great-aunt. She didn't know where they were, but they couldn't be that hard to find and they wouldn't be as well protected as Evans himself. If she couldn't kill him, let him know what it was like to lose family.

But she couldn't bring herself to do it. She couldn't lower herself to that level, no matter how much she hated Harry Evans.

She gave up her revenge then. She'd spent over a year on it, stretching her patience to its limits, been set on fire for her efforts. Her latest gamble had failed, snatching from her even her last remaining link to Nathaniel, who she was sure wouldn't like the way she'd treated his kin. Revenge and hatred had blinded her vision and it seemed as is Fate herself was telling her to give up. Danielle knew she had to listen or she would destroy herself.

It wasn't easy, but she did it. She'd heard America was light on wizards and thick with half-breed creatures like her, so she reluctantly let go of her vengeful urges, booked passage on an ocean liner, and set off for the States.

* * *

Severus scowled as he turned a corner and saw Riddle stood outside Harry's bedroom, peering through a crack in the door. The sound of voices drifted out, too quiet to make out what they were saying but recognisable as Harry and Draco's.

It was Sunday and Severus' attitude towards the teenage Dark Lord hadn't improved over the week. He hadn't made any more murder attempts, though he wanted to. He wasn't sure what stayed his hand—whether it was a lingering disinclination to kill Tyler, an unwillingness to disobey Harry's declaration, or if Harry himself had done some magic to make sure no one killed Riddle.

Riddle hadn't actually been any trouble over the last week. Realising that his life could get very unpleasant if he made a nuisance of himself or caused trouble, he'd been perfectly polite and well-behaved. He never forced his presence on Severus, but he occasionally had conversations with the Assistant. He spent a lot of time in the library, reading a vast array of books, and the rest of the time he spent with Harry.

He slept in Harry's bedroom, in a second bed that Pippin had moved in there for him. When they were awake, he would read aloud from books on history or they would discuss magical theory. Sometimes they spoke in Parseltongue, which Severus hated even when the Assistant assured him Riddle wasn't trying to talk Harry into giving him a wand or commit some misdeed.

Things got unpleasant on Friday night when Draco flooed in from Hogwarts. The mere fact that Harry was sitting at a table to eat (albeit one placed in his bedroom), rather than remaining bed bound as he had for the past month was surprise enough. To see Tyler sitting with him was even more shocking. Finding out Tyler was actually Riddle had him turning white as a sheet and yanking out his wand.

Riddle had flinched away from him, surprising Draco long enough for Harry to disarm him. He always seemed to know when Riddle was afraid and he wouldn't tolerate any threats against Riddle. They suffered something truly awful together and shared a body and mind for years before; as much as Severus hated it, there was a connection between them that couldn't be broken without hurting them both.

Draco, however, struggled to understand it, and the whole weekend had been tense. Draco tried to convince Harry to kill Riddle; Harry refused, but forced Riddle to give them time alone in an attempt to ease Draco's distress; that left Riddle twitchy and nervous, trying to hide it beneath anger.

Severus was tempted to creep up on Riddle right then, but with the bedroom door open, startling Riddle would likely startle Harry, and that never ended well. His magic was more volatile than ever right now.

Footsteps heavy, he walked down the corridor. Riddle whipped around to see who it was, scowled, then turned back to peering through the door. Severus came to a stop behind him. Riddle twitched like he wanted to move away, but stayed in place.

"I hope you're not bothering them," Severus said quietly, not wanting to disturb the pair in the room. He could see through the gap in the door well enough to see Harry and Draco lying on the bed side by side, close enough for their arms to be touching and hands clasped.

Riddle, rather than make some snide comment, replied quietly, "I don't understand it."

Despite talking with Harry and the Assistant, Riddle had made no efforts to engage Severus in conversation over the past week, perhaps realising Severus wasn't interested. That he made such an opening statement now piqued Severus' curiosity.

"Don't understand what?"

"Why Harry touches him. Why he touches anyone."

"I think he just needs the reassurance that he's not alone," Severus said. He'd been surprised by Harry's need for touch over the past week. He still reacted badly to unexpected touches, but he could barely stand to go the length of a meal without holding someone's hand.

"He can hear us," Riddle pointed out.

"He can't see us. I imagine voices alone are no reassurance after he spent so long with you in his head."

"I'm real," Riddle said with a scowl, finally turning to face Severus. "I went through everything he did. You don't see me clutching at people like a clingy child."

"You can see," Severus pointed out, his own voice growing stern in response to Riddle's defensive attitude. "You also don't trust any of us."

"I trust Harry."

Severus nodded. "And you hold his hand."

Riddle frowned, reaching up to brush a stray hair away from his face. He'd spoken of cutting Tyler's long hair away, but Harry had nay-sayed him, insisting he had no right to change Tyler's appearance.

"It's _my_ appearance," Riddle had grumbled.

"Tyler hates his hair short," Harry countered, and that had been the end of it.

Riddle had since taking to tying it back in a half ponytail with ribbons; Severus had a sneaking suspicion they were stolen from things left behind by Lucius. Riddle's robes, meanwhile, came from Harry's trunk and Draco's wardrobe, usually taking whatever he fancied without asking permission.

As Tyler tended towards Muggle wear outside his school uniform, and usually only tied his hair up when he was ordered to in Potions and Herbology classes, Severus rarely found himself thinking of Tyler when he faced Riddle these days. It wasn't just his appearance, either; the way Riddle held himself was different to Tyler. There was something of Harry in his stance.

Severus passed Riddle to rap his knuckles on Harry's door, pushing it open and entering the room. Harry and Draco sat, Harry's head turning only slightly in his direction while Draco looked over, eyes passing Severus to look at Riddle still lingering in the hallway, and he scowled.

"Draco, it's almost ten o'clock, you have to return to Hogwarts."

Draco's gaze snapped to him. "No. I can't go back."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Me? Professor, how can you expect me to go back to Hogwarts now?"

"You have an education—"

"Harry needs me. I can't go, not while _he's_ hanging around."

"Draco, you have to," Harry said. "I'm okay. You can't miss Hogwarts because of me, and you don't have to worry about Riddle. He won't hurt me, I told you that."

Draco turned to him. His free hand rose as if to touch Harry's face, but stopped short, fingers curling in and hand dropping to his own lap. "I don't trust him."

"I do." Harry's hand came up, a mirror of Draco's action, but he followed it through, reaching blindly for Draco's face. He missed, but Draco cocked his head so his hair brushed Harry's reaching fingers and Harry adjusted his touch, threading his fingers through the blond strands. "Draco, trust me, please?"

"I don't want to leave you, Harry."

"I know. I don't want you to leave either, but—"

"Then I'll stay!"

"Draco, you need to go to school."

"Fuck school! You need me."

"You can't neglect your education," Severus said, moving further into the room. "You've one year left, Draco. You'd be a fool to give up now."

"I'm seventeen, I can do as I please."

"How do you think your mother would react?"

Draco glowered at him, not impressed at Severus' attempts at manipulation. "She'll deal with it."

"Draco, go," Harry said. "You need to take your NEWTs. One of us should. You have to go and then tell me everything that's happening. I don't think Professor McGonagall will ever let me set foot in the castle."

Severus wasn't sure Harry really cared what was happening in Hogwarts, but if it convinced Draco to go then Harry could say whatever lies he wanted.

"Harry…"

Harry stroked his hair then withdrew his hand and patted it against the one of Draco's that he still held. "I'm okay, Draco. You're coming back next weekend, aren't you?"

"I planned to, but that was before—I really think I should stay, Harry."

"No. Go back to school. I'll see you—I mean… you know—on Friday. You need to study and I'll work with the Assistant on my magic. I'll get stronger and learn how to move around without walking into things, and then you won't have to worry about me, alright?"

"I'll always worry about you, Harry," Draco said softly. "I love you."

Severus looked away, staring unseeing out the window. He felt like an intruder and was sure the two boys had forgotten him, but he didn't want to move and draw their attention. Turning his bad ear to them made it harder to hear, made him feel less like he was eavesdropping.

"I love you too, Draco, so please do this for me. If you stay, all I want to do is sit with you. Go to Hogwarts for me and come back so I can show you how better I am."

"I can help you get better. I'll encourage you, I won't let you be lazy. I can study for my NEWTs privately, we can do it together. I'll read the textbooks for you and—"

"No," Severus interrupted, letting his gaze go back to them. He could see Harry's conviction wavering and he had to put a stop to it before Draco brought him around. "You have to return to school, Draco. That was the agreement. The school's education is not what Harry needs; his practical magic is well advanced of anything you'd learn and his theory education is more than sufficient. His focus has to be on recovering and learning to live with his injuries. It would only be detrimental to you both if you stayed here and tried to teach yourselves."

"You can teach us," Draco immediately suggested, even as his expression was bitter and resentful.

"I am not a teacher any longer. All I am right now is a father, and as Harry's father I'm telling you to get your arse back through the fireplace."

"You're not _my_ father," Draco snapped. "You're a guest in my house, so you might be careful how you speak to me."

"I'll speak to you as I please to do what's best for you and Harry. You have to return to school; don't make me summon your mother."

"Draco," Harry said, and finally tugged his hands free from Draco's. "Dad's right. You can't stay. I'm tired and you need to go now. I'll be alright, and I'll see you on Friday, okay?"

"Harry, please…"

"Go, Draco," Harry said softly.

Draco blew out a hard breath, turning his face away from all of them briefly then looking back to Harry. He lifted his hand, warned of it, and placed it against Harry's cheek. Harry leant into it and Severus looked away, pretending not to hear as they exchanged 'I love you's. He only turned back when he heard the shift of Draco climbing off the bed.

"I'll see you next week," he promised Harry finally, then turned to Severus with a curt, "Professor," before turning on his heel and stalking to the door. He stopped just outside, eying Riddle with open hatred. "You better leave him alone."

Riddle said nothing, just stared back dispassionately until Draco moved away. As his footsteps receded down the hall, Riddle stalked into the room and threw himself down on his bed.

Severus ignored him, watching Harry. As soon as Draco had left, he'd settled back against the pillows, drawing Kiwi to him and hugging her tightly. He looked lost and small and like he might burst into tears at any moment. Severus moved over.

"Harry, I'm sitting beside you," he said. He did nothing more than that, knowing that as much as Harry clung to people he was still cautious about touch. Neither of them spoke, nor did Riddle break the silence of the room. Severus didn't look at the other boy much, but he glanced over a few times for just long enough to see something like envy on his face, quickly hidden when he noticed Severus looking.

Gradually, as the fire in the hearth died down, Harry relaxed at Severus' side, leaning into him until he fell asleep with his head nestled on Severus' shoulder.


	57. Chapter 57

**Chapter 57**

 ** _Eight Months Later_**

Harry lay in the garden of Malfoy Manor, grass tickling the back of his neck and the sun warming his front. Draco was beside him, fingers linked together, and Riddle was on his other side, not touching but close enough Harry could reach out and take his hand if he wanted. Snape and the Assistant were nearby, lounging in deck chairs, the Assistant dozing in swim shorts and Snape under the shade of a large umbrella.

It was one of Harry's better days. He didn't feel adrift in the world, didn't feel like his mind was cracked to pieces, didn't feel afraid that at any moment it would all come crashing down around him and he'd find himself back in Voldemort's chains.

Snape was quizzing them on potions, asking questions that the three teens took turns to answer. Draco's NEWTs were just over a month away, and Harry and Riddle had mostly caught up to the same level in subjects they had an interest in, helping Draco revise on the weekends. It wasn't the weekend right then. It was a Tuesday, but Draco refused to go home last Sunday. As all his classes were focused on revision now, it didn't matter much.

All of them were pretending Harry wasn't meant to die in two days.

Draco found out about the demon deal four months ago, when Riddle mentioned it in a fit of spitefulness. Draco'd grown more and more miserable ever since. There had been times when he seemed happy to leave after his weekend visits so he could bury himself in schoolwork and pretend he didn't know what he did. Other times he argued to stay at the Manor full time, but Snape had always kicked him out… except this week.

Harry hadn't told any of them about his Horcrux and Riddle had kept it quiet, too. He'd Wished for every Hellhound in existence to die and they were all pretending it was enough to save him, but they couldn't hide their fears. Snape had been snapish, Draco clingy, and even Riddle had been more quiet than usual. Harry suspected he was afraid of what would happen to him if Harry really did die. There would be no one left to protect him.

Only the Assistant seemed untouched by it all, but he'd seen so many other versions of himself die that Harry supposed it made no difference to him to see one more.

Even so, Harry liked to think his death would have some effect on the Assistant. They'd worked together a lot over past months, with the Assistant teaching Harry magical theory that no books had ever covered, about the nature of magic, and how to use his magic in ways he hadn't considered.

Together, they'd healed his body beyond what the healers managed. His hands were still imperfect, barely capable of holding a fork for the length of a meal, and his face was still mangled by the scar, but they'd managed to reduce it so it wasn't quite as vicious. All the runes Voldemort had carved into him were gone, but his wrists were still torn and he had a few other scars scattered across his body. They hadn't been able to do anything for his damaged eye, but Harry had it removed and placed his green prosthetic in it. He still couldn't see, but the eye patch had made him feel like a pirate.

His lack of sight wasn't quite such a problem anymore. That was the biggest thing he and the Assistant had worked on—learning to 'see' with his magic. There were spells that could let his mind see what other people's eyes did, which was useful in certain cases, but for navigating the world around him he needed something more. To that end, they'd developed seeing with magic—the magical equivalent of SONAR.

"You see, magic is all around us," the Assistant had explained many months earlier. "When we cast a spell, we draw it in and expel it in the form of whatever spell we cast."

"I thought magic came from inside us, from our core," Snape said. He and Riddle had both sat in on the lessons, Snape only sometimes when he was curious, while Riddle sat in determined to learn something. Snape didn't like it, but Harry trusted Riddle not to become a problem even if he learnt some wandless magic, which he had, picking up a few spells over the months. He wasn't anywhere close to the level he had been as the resurrected Voldemort.

The Assistant had rolled his eyes at Snape's remark. "Humans don't have a magical core. Wizards like to think they do because they're arrogant and have a vastly over-inflated sense of self importance."

"Then why can't Muggles do magic?" Riddle asked.

The Assistant shrugged. "They just don't have the ability to draw in magic like we do. Wizards have a constant flow of magic moving through them—just a trickle, mind. Squibs have the bare minimum, which lets them see Dementors and the like, but wizards have a slightly larger amount which is what gives us the extended life span. There are actually some Muggles who have that squib-level trickle of magic, but they're ignored by the wizarding community and called crazy by the Muggle community when they start talking about cloaked figures eating souls and what have you.

"But anyway, wizards have the ability to draw that magic in and guide it to a certain effect through the use of spell words, will, and a channelling device—in most cases, a wand. The strength of a wizard is determined by how much effort they put into their spell casting. You'd be surprised at how lazy most wizards are and the amount of spells they sacrifice the ability to do just because they don't put in the effort to learn or cast it properly."

"But mine's not like that," Harry pointed out. "Yours isn't either, is it?"

"Mine is, I'm just way more attuned to the magic moving through me and I can control it with greater precision than anyone else in the world, so I can make it do things that most wizards can't, with only half the effort and no spell words or channelling devices. If wizards were painters, I'm Michelangelo while everyone else is a toddler with finger paints."

"That's arrogant," Riddle scoffed.

"It's very arrogant," the Assistant agreed. "Also mostly true."

"And what about me?" Harry asked.

"In painter terms? You're throwing buckets of paint around, making a wish, and ending up with the Sistine Chapel. It's impressive but also irritating because I'm up there making calculated strokes with my paintbrush. You've got more magic flowing through you than I've ever seen in a person before and it's constant. That trickle I mentioned the average wizard having—most people have to draw more in when they cast a spell, but you… it's like an unending river persistently smashing its way through you."

"That's why it lashes out," Snape realised. "There's so much magic in him that it has to do something."

The Assistant grinned. "Ten points to Slytherin. Directed by his emotions. I've only seen it destruct, but I imagine different things happen when you're happy?"

"I conjure butterflies," Harry said.

"Pink ones sometimes," Riddle said with a snigger, and Harry felt his cheeks warm.

The Assistant went on to teach Harry how to feel the magic around him. Over time, with practice, he learnt to determine the shape of something based on how magic moved around it. His range was limited, but grew with practice; currently he could detect things up to about fifteen feet. He could feel the way it moved around wizards, how it drew into them when they cast a spell, and even how it was different around different people, like they had a layer of magic over their skin that was unique to each of them.

He had fewer magical outbursts since he started doing it. Using his magic was the key—the more he used it, the less it would build up and expel itself with his emotions. He'd never completely be free of his outbursts, but he could at least reduce them.

So his weeks had passed in magical practice and physical recovery, with Snape also teaching him bits and piece of magic to fill up the time, mostly potions, dark arts, and defence. The weekends he spent with Draco, hearing about Hogwarts and helping him with his homework. He often missed being at school, but aside from the Assistant teaching him things Hogwarts never could, he'd heard enough from Draco to know he'd be unwelcome at the school. A lot of people still thought he should be arrested for killing Dumbledore, and the people he'd killed at Voldemort's command. Apparently taking out Voldemort, as they believed he'd done, didn't make up for the murders he commit.

Even if he'd been allowed into Hogwarts, and hadn't been way beyond the curriculum, he knew he couldn't go. He'd never be able to handle being around that many people. He still jumped out of his skin and broke things when people touched him unexpectedly. Even with his new ability to 'see', he needed the touch to come slow enough that he could mentally prepare himself for it.

Despite that, he sometimes still needed to cling to someone; he couldn't handle long hugs, but he would grasp Snape, or Draco, or Riddle's hand for hours.

As well as his touch issues and fear, he couldn't be around people because of the way he'd changed. He'd been through something that very few people could understand and he knew it would drive him mad to be surrounded by those people. Sometimes, even being with Draco was too much and he found himself glad when Sunday evening would come and Draco would return to Hogwarts.

Draco was trying his best, eternally patient and showing no sign that, even after so many months, he was tired of dealing with Harry's issues, but he couldn't understand why sometimes Harry would be struck with terror and only Riddle's Parseltongue murmurs would calm him down.

There were times when Harry's mind played tricks on him, convinced him that he was still held prisoner and his freedom was just a hallucination, and only Riddle could convince him otherwise. They grew less frequent with time, but still on occasion he sought Riddle's comfort over anyone else. Sometimes, just sitting with Riddle could do more for his mental state than anything else.

Draco and Snape hated it, Harry knew, but he couldn't do anything about it. They'd at least stopped trying to convince him to kill Riddle.

The Assistant was better. Harry thought that, aside from Riddle, he was the only person that really understood what Harry had suffered. Even the torture Snape's suffered, both last summer and the year before, didn't truly let him comprehend it, but Harry felt like the Assistant might.

He could never be sure because he never asked and the Assistant never spoke about it. He taught him magic, he would read if Harry requested it, he offered his hand when the world felt like it was slipping away from Harry—but he never asked questions, he didn't offer comfort or distractions when Harry didn't need them, and he knew when to fetch Riddle even when Harry's mind was too rattled to ask for it.

Now they were all just waiting to see if Harry would die, and for the Assistant's time loop to end. It was the turning point for all of them, that moment to see where the future went. The Assistant was the only person who knew exactly what he'd be doing; Snape had given him orders to go to his alternate self when the timeline reset, explain everything, and make sure the other Snape actually took responsibility for the other young Harry.

Draco, meanwhile, had applied to Avicenna Healer's Institute and would enter it in the summer if he passed his NEWTs well enough, but Harry had a feeling that if he died then Draco wouldn't bother. He wasn't sure what Draco would do, but he was certain his death would destroy Draco's ambition.

Snape's future was almost the opposite—he didn't seem to have any plans for if Harry lived, but the suspicion Harry had back in January had settled into a certainty: if Harry died, Snape would kill himself. Snape had said nothing about it, had given no indication, but Harry was sure of it nonetheless.

Riddle's future, too, was dependant on Harry. No one had said anything, but Harry suspected that if he died then Snape would kill Riddle and nothing would stop him this time.

He had far greater plans for if Harry survived. Under Harry and the Assistant's careful supervision, and despite Snape and Draco's objections, they'd given Riddle a wand—Harry Wished for Tyler's wand—so he could get an idea of his magical skill. His skill was equal to that of the average sixteen year old; with practice and study the Assistant expected him to become just as powerful as Voldemort had been.

"Perhaps avoid the dark magics, though," he warned, "so you don't end up like he did."

"I certainly won't split my soul again," Riddle agreed, and the Assistant snorted.

"You even try and you're liable to shatter it to pieces, and your mind along with it. You'll end up in Saint Mungo's long term ward, eating liquidated food and drooling on yourself."

"You're joking," Riddle said, but he'd sounded uncertain and the Assistant hadn't responded. Harry had no idea if the Assistant was right, but the threat of it was probably enough to keep Riddle from committing cold-blooded murder.

Assuming Harry survived, Riddle planned to take over Tyler's life. Tyler was utterly dormant within him, not even a voice in the back of Riddle's mind, and even Snape and Draco's objections to the idea were weak. The fact that Tyler tried to kill Harry left them less than caring of his situation.

As such, Riddle planned to take the NEWTs on his own (like Harry, he couldn't stand going back to Hogwarts, for much the same reasons) and then get into politics. He had plans for a wizard-only country, a plan that not even Snape and Draco objected to. In fact, the only person who did was the Assistant, and he only played devil's advocate, pointing out flaws with Riddle's plans, primarily Harry's part in it.

"You can't use him to create a kingdom," he'd said when Riddle expressed the idea Harry should Wish the plan into action. "Harry won't always be around, and your idea will flourish better if you bring people around to it instead of forcing them."

"What if no one agrees with the idea?" Riddle asked.

The Assistant shrugged. "Then it's not meant to be. Look, if you Wished a kingdom into being and made yourself the overlord, it would last only as long as their fear and Harry's power made it work. When either of you died, the whole thing would fall apart. If you want to leave a legacy in this world, you have to work for it. Your idea isn't a terrible one, but if you want it to settle, you need to build a foundation and work up. You're young, you've got the skill of your own mind, and you can use being Marcus Fleetwood's son to make a few connections. You have time to make your vision a reality."

Assuming Harry didn't die.

Now, under the summer sun, the Assistant spoke up during a pause after one of Snape's questions.

"I've got a question. What's the perfect ratio of gin to tonic in a G'n'T?"

"How academic," Snape said dryly.

"You've been drilling them for an hour and I'm thirsty. Someone answer the question and send an order to Pippin."

"You don't really expect us to know—" Draco began, but then Riddle screamed.

" _What the hell is wrong with your face?_ "

Harry sat up, his heart racing, hand clenching around Draco's. "Whose face? What's wrong?"

"The Assistant, what you are you _doing_? Make it go away!" Riddle sounded utterly horrified, more than Harry had heard since last summer. It made terror pulse through Harry; he knew there wasn't much that scared Riddle, and less that scared him enough to actually show it.

Harry felt the magic shift as the Assistant sat up. "What are you talking about, I'm not doing anything."

"You are!"

"His face is fine, calm down," Snape ordered, turning in his seat and drawing his wand.

"Are you _blind_?" Riddle cried. "Are you both—this is a trick. You're messing with my head, stop it, _stop it right now!_ "

"I'm not—" the Assistant began, but Riddle scrambled to his feet and ran, heading back towards the house. Without hesitation, Harry got up and followed. He felt Draco rise as well, but Snape called him back and Draco stayed, thankfully. Riddle wouldn't respond well to them right now.

Inside, Riddle stopped halfway down the hallway to the stairs, spinning around to face Harry as he approached. "He _was_ doing something with his face," he spat, but his voice shook. Harry wanted to reach out and touch him, but Riddle didn't receive touch so well and it was less of a comfort to him than to Harry.

"I believe you."

"I thought they stopped hating me."

Harry had nothing to say to that. He didn't think they did hate him—well, perhaps Snape—but he certainly couldn't say they liked him.

Riddle was shaking, trembling just enough that, at this distance, Harry could feel the vibrations in the magic. He held out his hand and, after a moment, Riddle took it, stepping closer.

"Tell them not to do it again," Riddle said quietly.

"I will," Harry promised. "Do you want me to come sit with you?"

Riddle squeezed his hand then let go and stepped away. "No. I'm going to read in the library."

Harry heard him walk away then returned to the garden. He stopped just outside the door, uncertain which way to go. They'd been sat more than fifteen feet from the house and he hadn't paid enough attention to which direction they'd gone when they left earlier.

"Harry?" Draco's voice called, and Harry turned in his direction. "Is everything alright?"

Harry went over, sitting back down beside him and taking his hand. "You shouldn't have played that trick on him."

"I wasn't playing any tricks on him," the Assistant said. He had a glass in his hand; presumably he'd sent to Pippin for that gin and tonic. "I really wasn't doing anything with my face."

"He wasn't," Draco agreed. "Riddle was freaking out over nothing."

"He saw something," Harry said. He was certain Riddle had been telling the truth; he wouldn't have got that upset otherwise.

"He thought he saw something," Snape amended.

"You think he was hallucinating?"

"It's the only explanation."

"Or the Assistant was messing with him."

"You'd have known if I was," the Assistant said. "You're still feeling the magic, aren't you? You'd notice if I did anything, and I've got better things to do than play silly tricks on Riddle."

"Riddle's sanity may be slipping," Snape said with a faint tone of apology. "To be honest, it'd be no surprise. Hallucinations may be just the beginning."

"If he was insane, shouldn't we have noticed it before?" Draco said. "I mean, it's been nearly a year since…"

Harry hadn't got the hang of reading expressions yet, but Draco must have made one that was telling because Snape shook his head.

"If this insanity was because of the torture, then yes, but he seems to be recovering from that as well as Harry is."

"So then what? He just randomly became insane? Had a psychotic break or something?"

"Or something. Riddle split his soul into eight pieces," Snape explained. "He's stitched it back together inside someone else's body and then moved it to yet another, which he's still sharing with Lyle's soul, no matter what he says about Lyle being dormant. From what I've been able to gather over recent months, putting one's soul back together is exceedingly painful and requires remorse, yet Riddle's shown no sign of any. He's an anomaly. It would be no surprise at all if his sanity slipped as result."

* * *

James clenched his wand, looking up and down the road. It was empty except for a couple of cars parked opposite the primary school, although he couldn't be entirely certain there wasn't someone peeking out the windows of the houses on the other side of the street.

Not that it really mattered. He wore his Invisibility Cloak, so if anyone was looking they wouldn't see anything.

He watched as the children returned to their classes after lunch break. The school was a small one, just a single building and less than fifty students. It suited his purposes perfectly.

Once all the students were inside, he checked the street again, waited for a passing car to drive by, then pushed the school gate open. It squeaked loudly and he winced, but hurriedly moved on. Hopefully anyone that looked out and saw it would think it was just the wind.

He headed towards the doors the children had gone through and slipped inside. He passed a couple of classrooms, saw them empty, then came to a communal room. Through the window set in the door, he saw the children sat in rows on the floor while a woman who was presumably headmistress spoke from the front of the room.

That was perfect.

He pushed the door open. Everyone looked towards him, the headmistress breaking off in the middle of her lecture to stare at the door opening and closing apparently by itself. James tapped his wand to the lock and pulled off his cloak. As the people gaped or screamed in shock, and a few children gasped in amazement, he waved his wand towards a fire door on the other side of the room, locking that, too.

"Everyone please stay calm," he called loudly. "I don't want to hurt anyone."

"Who are you?" the headmistress demanded, taking a step towards him. James pointed his wand, the woman furrowed her brow in confusion but not fear, and he conjured ropes to bind around her wrists. She staggered, then fell to her knees as, with a few more flicks, the ropes slithered around to bind the wrists of the other three teachers, forcing all of them to their knees in a circle.

It upset the children, some of them starting to rise. James conjured drapes to cover the windows and the fire door; he knew from experience that an inability to see some method of escape went a long way to helping someone feel trapped.

It darkened the room considerably. There were electric lights, but he didn't know where the switch was so he just conjured and lit some floating candles. As he'd expected, the children made no moves to run for the now hidden doors and windows, and several of them stared opened mouthed at the candles.

"Please stay seated. I promise you, I'm not going to hurt anyone."

The headmistress, to her credit, twisted around and called in a calm voice, "Children, listen to the man. Do as he says."

"Thank you," James said as the children settled down. The headmistress merely glared at him.

"What do you want with us?" one of the other teachers asked, the only male.

"What _are_ you?" another asked. "How did you do those things?"

"I'm a wizard," James said.

"Don't be ridiculous, magic isn't real," the male teacher said immediately.

James smiled, moving around the room to one of the now hidden windows. The children he passed edged away from him.

"Then how'd I do what I just did?" James asked.

The teacher was stumped for a moment, then said, "Illusions. Tricks."

"If that rope's an illusion, you should be able to just stand free of it."

"I thought wizards wore pointy hats," said a girl of about eight.

"Alice!" scolded one of the teachers, looking nervously between the girl and James.

Alice scowled. "The wizards in books and on TV all have pointy hats!"

"It's okay," James said to the teacher, then to Alice, "You're right, we do wear pointy hats sometimes."

Then he tapped his hair with his wand and conjured one straight onto his head. He smiled when Alice and several others gasped in delight.

"He really _is_ a wizard!"

James nudged aside one of the drapes he'd conjured, but discovered that the windows didn't actually open. He moved on to the fire door, unlocked it, and pushed it open just enough to stick his wand out and point it skyward.

" _Morsmordre._ "

He watched the glittering green skull and snake sail into the air, glowing brightly even in the daylight. That would bring the Ministry down on him soon enough.

"Will you show us some more magic?"

James shut and locked the door again, turning back to the room. The request came from a boy, presumably the one who was now waving his hand in the air and looking excitedly at James.

"What would you like me to show you?"

He was immediately inundated with requests from turning teachers into pigs to conjuring unicorns to making people fly. He refused the first request, not wanting to get the teachers too upset with him; he couldn't conjure unicorns, as it was impossible to conjure magical creatures; but he agreed to the last request. He soon had a queue of children begging to have a turn at getting levitated once around the room.

He got through five before the Ministry turned up.

He knew they'd arrived because a silver Patronus flew through the drapes to land in front of him in the form of a jack rabbit. He set down a levitating six year old and shushed the excited comments at the glowing rabbit as it opened its mouth and spoke with Nymphadora Tonks' voice.

" _What's going on, James?"_

James smiled grimly.

So they were trying the friendly route, never mind that James had never really developed much of a friendship with any of the Order members. He'd always been too distrustful of them, even after Sirius stole his Bond. The closest he got to anyone was Tonks, but only because Sirius hung out with her, which was presumably why she was acting as negotiator. She was the one he'd spoken to most in the months after Execution Day, providing all the details he knew of Voldemort and the Death Eaters' activities.

They also must have brought out Moody if they knew he was the one in here.

"Can you make one of them?" asked one of the kids as the rabbit dispersed.

"Not exactly like that," James said. "Be quiet a minute."

They acquiesced, letting him concentrate as he sent a reply back saying, _"I've fifty kids and four adults. The Statute of Secrecy is broken. Even the adults believe it's real magic."_

"Make a dinosaur!"

James shook his head. "Sorry, no more magic tricks. Sit back down."

There were groans and grumbles of disappointment, but they all went. James moved himself away from the fire door to the front of the hall, standing by the still-bound teachers.

The rabbit came back.

" _Let the children go and we can talk about what you want."_

James tapped his wand against his mouth, thinking of the best way to get what he wanted. He'd gone a long way to it, but he wasn't certain he'd done quite enough.

He flicked his wand at the teachers and the headmistress' hands came free. He grabbed her arm and yanked her to her feet, walking her over to the fire door. It opened to the rear of the school, but he knew the Ministry wouldn't have set up a command centre in the street out front.

"Look outside and tell me what you see," he ordered.

She tugged the drapes aside and looked out. "A tent. More wizards."

"How many?"

"Six that I can see."

James looked around. "Is there quill and parchment in here?"

There was a pause, then one of the kids asked, "What's quill and parchment?"

"That's what old people from a hundred years ago used to write with," answered another, older child. "No one uses that anymore, mister."

"Pen and paper then," James amended.

One of the kids he'd levitated around the room thrust their hand in the air. "I've got a crayon."

"There's paper in there," the headmistress added, nodding towards a cardboard box at the front of the hall.

"Stay there and don't try to run," James ordered her and went to the box. It was full of printed leaflets advertising sports day, but the backs were clear and he accepted the crayon to write a message on one.

"What's your name?" he asked the boy who'd given him the crayon.

"James."

James blinked at him. "Really?"

"Uh huh."

He laughed. "That's my name, too. James, will you help me?"

"Sure!"

"What's your favourite animal?"

"Sharks," the boy answered, and growled, presumably under the impression sharks did so.

That was no good. "What's your favourite animal that goes on land?"

"Mmm… prob'ly a tiger."

"A tiger, that's good. James, would you like to be a tiger?"

"No!" gasped the headmistress.

"I'd prefer to be a shark," the boy said.

"If I turned you into a shark, you'd be stuck because there's no water."

"Oh, yeah," the boy said, disappointed. "I guess a tiger'd be okay then."

"Great," James said, and turned him into one.

There were shrieks of shock, horror, and delight from all around him. The tiger was only a small cub, blinking dumbly around him. James crouched and conjured a bit of string, loosely tying it about the cub's neck and attaching the leaflet to it. He grabbed the cub by the scruff and lifted him up, grunting at the unexpected weight of him, and took him over to the door. The headmistress watched him approach, horrified.

"Don't worry," James told her, "they'll turn him back. Open the door."

"What?"

"Open the door."

"Open…? You're not letting him _out_?"

"Look, there's someone out there who can see through walls. They've seen what I've done. As soon as I release him, they'll catch him, and they'll change him back. He'll be fine. Now open the door before I show you that magic can be used for more than just parlour tricks."

Irritation made his tone harsh enough that she believed him. He tapped his wand to the door to unlock it, the headmistress opened it, and James released the cub. As soon as it was out of the way, he slammed the door shut again.

"Go back over there," he ordered the headmistress, pointing to the other teachers. She went quickly.

"Can I be a tiger too?" asked Alice, the girl who insisted on the pointy hats.

"No," James said. "I can't do anymore magic for you. Someone's coming to take me away soon."

"Take you away where?"

"To prison, hopefully."

The headmistress looked at him in confused surprise. "You _want_ to go to prison?"

"That's what this whole thing was about," he told her with a shrug. "We're not supposed to reveal magic to Muggles—non-magical people. It's against the law, as is using magic on Muggles."

"There are _laws_ on magic?"

"But hang on," said the male teacher. "You've been unlocking that door with your… uh… wand? Won't you be able to just walk out of prison?"

"They'll take it away when they arrest me, obviously, but even if they didn't, I wouldn't just walk out. That would defeat the whole point."

A knock at the fire door drew all their attention. James peered around the drapes, making sure there was only one person, as he'd demanded. There was so he vanished the drapes, pushed the handle down, and stepped back as the door swung open. Tonks entered, dressed in her forest green Auror robes, her hair a standard shade of dull blonde.

"Hi everyone," she greeted cheerfully. "Are you all alright?"

Some of the children nodded. The teachers exchanged baffled looks.

"Are you the one that's come to arrest him?" asked Alice.

"Yes, I am."

"Why? Is he a criminal? Did he kill someone?"

"He didn't kill someone, but he's not supposed to turn your classmates into tigers."

"James wanted to be a tiger," Alice objected.

Tonks glanced at James, who explained, "The kid's name was James as well. I take it you want this."

He held out his wand, handle first. She took it and tucked it into an inside pocket, then took out a pair of handcuffs and ordered him to turn around. He did, letting her cuff him without a fight.

"Okay, everyone," Tonks said once it was done. "I'm going to take him outside, then some other people are going to come in and talk to you and untie your teachers. You're all safe now."

She gave them all a grin and started to lead James away.

"Wait!"

Tonks and James stopped, looking back at the headmistress.

"Why do you want to go to prison?" she asked James.

"Because," James said with a smile, "that's where the man who owns my soul is."

* * *

Harry didn't like to think Snape was right. If Riddle's lost his sanity, Harry wasn't sure he could cling to his own. His own future was as unclear as Snape's should he survive; he'd never made any real plans, always half expecting to die, and he wasn't sure what he would do with his life if he survived.

But he did know he had to keep an eye an Riddle. If they lived and Riddle went on to build his country of wizards, Harry would be there to make sure he didn't cross the line. He would make sure Riddle didn't become Voldemort again. It was one of two things of which he was absolutely certain these days, even when his mind was rattling inside his head and he was sure of nothing else—Draco loved him, and Riddle was Harry's responsibility.

If he didn't have Riddle to watch over, he wasn't sure what he would do to keep himself focused. Draco couldn't be the only thing in the world he clung to.

But it seemed Snape was right. Over the next two days, Riddle kept seeing things—faces twisting, words shifting on the pages, visions of the people he murdered coming to haunt him. He would wake up screaming from nightmares, sobbing and terrified. No one could get near him; not even Harry could touch him.

Then, on the last day of April, at sunset, he sat huddled on his bed, knees drawn up and arms wrapped around his legs. Harry sat on his own bed in a similar position, Draco within arm's reach but not touching. Snape sat in an armchair, drumming his fingers, and the Assistant was on the floor at his feet. No one had spoken a word in hours.

Today was the day Harry died.

Harry was afraid. More afraid than he'd been in months. He didn't want to die. He couldn't imagine what it would be like in hell, but he knew it would worse than what he'd suffered at Voldemort's hands, and that was bad enough.

He couldn't accept any comfort. Fear jumbled his thoughts, made them race from topic to topic, but he couldn't stand to be touched right then and nothing anyone said would comfort him. There was nothing to do but wait and see if he survived the next few hours.

Riddle gasped. Harry's head shot up.

"What is it?" Draco asked, only for Riddle to shush him violently. Harry could hear him breathing harshly, short little breaths as he tried to keep them shallow. Many long seconds passed. Snape's fingers stopped drumming and no one moved. All Harry could hear was Riddle's breathing.

Then, in the distance, the sound of wolves howling.

Harry hadn't thought he got get more afraid.

"The hounds." Riddle's voice was hardly more than a whisper, but it was utterly terrified.

"You hear them?" Harry said, his own voice shaking.

"I don't," Draco said, sounding uncertain.

"You wouldn't," the Assistant spoke, resigned. "They're not coming for you."

Snape shifted. "I thought you killed them."

"I Wished it," Harry said. "Maybe it doesn't work on them."

The Assistant sighed, leant his head back against the chair in which Snape sat. "You're not hearing them. I mean, you may or may not have killed them, but what you're hearing right now is the hallucinations. Hell herself is coming for you and she's making sure you know it."

"But _I've_ been seeing things," Riddle said, "not Harry."

"And they're coming for you, too. I thought that might be the case when you first saw something."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Snape demanded.

"Because I wasn't certain."

"But I didn't make a deal!" Riddle cried. "Harry was the one who sold his soul."

"While you were in him. You might have been just a shred of soul at the time, but you were still with him when he made his deal. Your soul is as destined for hell as his."

"No…"

"It makes sense," Snape murmured.

"But it was Harry's deal! He's the one with power, he's the one who talked to the demon, I shouldn't have to pay for that!"

"Do you think the demons care? This is a bank holiday deal for them, two for the price of one."

"He's going to die," Harry said, and was surprised at how steady his voice was. It silenced everyone else and he could sense them all looking at him. "The hounds will kill Tyler to get Riddle."

It wasn't a question. He was absolutely certain of the fact. Through his terror, that fact was clear. That, and a sudden realisation.

"This is my fault."

"No, Harry—" Draco began, but Harry cut him off.

"It is. It's my fault. Tyler's going to die because of me."

He didn't have to think about what he did next. He didn't consider if it might be beyond his skill. The Assistant had taught him too much about magic over the last eight months for him to still have doubts. If there was something he couldn't do, it was only because he was going about it the wrong way—if he couldn't break down a door, he needed to pick the lock. If the lock wouldn't be picked, he needed to use different tools.

"There's things even I can't do," the Assistant had said, "but only because I haven't figure out how yet."

He knew what kept Riddle in Tyler's body—the binding rune that the Assistant had tricked him into carving before the soul transfer. The Assistant had charmed it to be indestructible so Riddle couldn't cut through it and break its power, but Harry just Wished those charms gone and Wished the scarred flesh away. Riddle screamed, collapsed on the bed clutching at his chest, and Snape and Draco leapt up.

Harry ignored them, just Wished for Riddle's soul to return to his—Harry's—own body. It helped that, even though he only vaguely recalled the transfer ritual in September, his magic and body still remembered it. It made it easier for him to pull Riddle's soul back, returning it the way he came.

It didn't hurt exactly. It was like a pressure on his whole body, then a slithering sensation in his head, and then he suddenly had a host of new memories. He grabbed his head, heard a distant whine come from his own mouth, and fought not to let the sudden influx overwhelm him. Riddle's whole life—Voldemort's life—raced through his mind.

The orphanage, just as awful as Uncle Vernon always claimed, except Riddle was one of the bullies instead of a victim. A full seven years of schooling, regular studies begrudgingly done quickly so he could focus on far more interesting research. Discovering the Chamber of Secrets and releasing the basilisk. Hunting down his ancestry from the scraps of information he had, murdering his father and grandparents—

—and then more deaths, so many lives wiped out in anger and fear and pure cold-blooded hatred, rising to power and charming people to his side, but always so afraid of abandonment that he began to rely on fear to keep people with him, hunting down those who opposed him because he was afraid that one of them, one day, would simply get lucky and kill him, so he killed them first—

Then the prophecy. The terror of knowing there was a child out there destined to bring about his end. Hunting them down and killing the woman, then turning his wand on Harry—on himself—on HarryRiddleVoldemortHarry—

 _I did that,_ said a familiar voice in his head. _I did it, not you. These are my memories, my past, my fear._

He felt another familiar presence trying to intrude on his mind, but he had too much to deal with and he pushed it out. He grit his teeth and dug his nails in his head, squeezed his eyes shut even though there were no images to shut out.

They weren't his memories. He was Harry Evans. He'd taken Riddle back, but they weren't the same person.

He was Harry, not Riddle.

Harry, not Riddle.

Harry.

"Harry!" Draco, right in front of him, concerned. "Harry, what's happening, are you alright?"

 _Just peachy._

 _Back here again._

"Yes," Harry said, and felt a strange relief at hearing that voice again. His head had been so empty for months; he hadn't realised how settling it would be to have Riddle back inside it. Riddle sounded happier, too; more confident.

 _Oh, you think I_ _ **like**_ _being stuck inside your head again? I don't even get to be in control._

It was grumbled, but Harry still thought Riddle liked it more than he'd admit. Riddle might have been in a better mental state after their torture, but the physical world had been a more difficult place for him to deal with.

"Harry?"

Before he could answer, there was a wail of pain and anguish from the other side of the room. The Assistant was at the other bed, perched on it with his hands over Tyler's chest. Harry could feel the magic swirling around the wound on Tyler's chest, healing it.

"What happened to me?" Tyler said. His voice shook, but it wasn't with fear like when Riddle had been in him, and his general cadence was different. Even to Harry's magic he felt different now; it wasn't something he could put into words, but the magic around him, his magical skin, was more _Tyler_ than _Riddle_. He was surprised to feel that there was magic moving _through_ Tyler still; the Assistant had said a squib or Muggle would feel different to a wizard, but Tyler was much the same as Snape or Draco.

"You had several layers of skin cleaved off," the Assistant answered Tyler. "Just lay still while I heal it."

 _That really hurt, by the way._

"Sorry," Harry said.

"Um, that's alright," Tyler said nervously, and Harry didn't mention that he hadn't been apologising to him. Tyler groaned. "I feel like someone ripped out my brain and stuffed it back in again."

"Close," the Assistant said cheerfully. "What do you remember?"

"I… uh…" Harry felt him move his head, presumably looking around the room and taking in the collection of people about him, then he said, "Nothing. I don't remember nothing."

"Mr Lyle, you are a terrible liar," Snape said. "You needn't fear retribution for attempting to kill Harry, however. I think eight months possessed by the Dark Lord is sufficient punishment."

"He's not possessed anymore?" Draco said, looking back to Harry. "Is he in you again? Are you Riddle?"

"I'm Harry."

"Prove it."

Harry didn't want to touch right then, but he also knew there was only one thing that would prove him as himself, one thing that Riddle would never do. He reached out, placed a shaking hand on the back of Draco's head, and leant forwards to kiss his cheek. It was the most he could manage right then. He let his lips linger for a few seconds, as long as he could manage, then pulled back.

"Harry…" Draco sighed, then demanded furiously, "What the fuck did you do that for?"

"Draco, calm down," Snape warned.

"He just took Riddle back!"

"I couldn't let Tyler die," Harry said, fighting the desire to draw back further from Draco. He didn't like dealing with anger.

"Why the hell not? He tried to kill you."

"Tried," Harry repeated. "Riddle stopped the bullet."

"Wait, that hit you," Tyler said. "I remember that. The bullet hit you and bounced off."

 _It was obvious that he was up to something,_ Riddle said. _I wasn't about to sit there completely defenceless._

Draco wasn't appeased. "That's no reason to take in Riddle. Why didn't you just destroy his soul?"

"You can't destroy a soul," the Assistant said before Harry could answer. He drew away from Tyler, magic settling as he finished his healing. "Souls are like energy. They can't be destroyed or created."

"Wouldn't that mean there are a limited number of souls in existence?" Tyler asked. "Does that mean reincarnation's real?"

"Not sure. I mean, I say they can't be destroyed or created, but possibly they can with a lot of time, but neither angels or demons or myself can do it, and when angels and demons agree on something, it's usually right."

"Angels are real?"

"Who cares?" Draco burst out, and Harry flinched. "Riddle needs to get out of Harry right fucking now!"

"Draco, stop shouting," Snape snapped. "You're scaring, Harry. If you can't calm down then get out."

For a moment, Draco didn't move. The magic around him was vibrating slightly, a sure sign of high emotions, and Harry instinctively turned his own defensive.

Then Draco leapt off the bed and stalked out the door, slamming it shut behind him.

"Mr Lyle, are you fit to walk?"

"I think so."

"Then please go somewhere else as well. The Assistant will answer any questions you have."

Tyler and the Assistant stood and headed for the door, but Tyler paused on his way out, turning to look back. "Am I going to die? From the hellhounds, I mean?"

As if his word conjured them, Harry heard howling in the distance—still far, but closer than before. He shivered and hugged himself.

"You'll be fine," the Assistant said. "They were never coming for you. Come on, I'll get you something to drink."

"Tyler," Harry called before they could go.

"What is it?"

He could hear the wariness in Tyler's voice.

"I'm sorry about your Muggle friend. I never wanted to kill her."

There was a pause, then: "What about Alex?"

"I didn't kill him, but I'm sorry he died. I chose your lives over theirs, and I'm sorry that hurt you."

"Yeah, well… sorry for trying to kill you, I guess."

"You guess?" Snape said dryly.

"My head's still a bit jumbled," Tyler said defensively. "I'll let you know how I feel when I've not got Riddle's feelings mixed in with my own."

"Okay, time to go," the Assistant said and hurried Tyler out.

In the remaining silence, Snape finally stood from his chair and moved across the room to perch on the edge of Harry's bed, out of reach.

"Are you alright?" he asked softly.

Harry shrugged.

"Draco wouldn't have hurt you. He's just upset and handling it badly."

"I know."

"He's afraid to lose you."

"I don't want to die," Harry said.

"You might not have if you'd left Riddle in Tyler."

 _Your daddy really knows how to hold a grudge. And that's bollocks anyway. We both would have died._

"Yes I would," Harry said to Snape. "I will. You heard the Assistant. Hell is coming for me, even if the hellhounds are dead."

Snape turned his head away, fist clenching and pressing hard into the bedspread.

"It wasn't your fault," he said, startling Harry.

"What wasn't?"

"Lyle's Muggle friend. Alex Stone and his family. None of it. You did what you were told to do and you saved your friends' lives. You shouldn't apologise for that, especially not when those friends try to kill you in retaliation."

 _He has a point._

Harry didn't really disagree with them, although he did still feel guilty about it. All he said was, "What about Dumbledore?"

"What about him?"

"I didn't have to kill him."

"He tried to kill you first," Snape snarled, punching the bed. When Harry twitched away, he softened his voice and flattened his hand against the covers. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you."

"Dumbledore didn't try to kill me."

"He put magic suppressing cuffs on you."

"Yeah, but I had tattoos to counteract them." He touched his left wrist with his right hand, feeling the ragged scars under his fingers; the dittany had helped a little, but it couldn't get rid of them entirely. "I was in no danger from them, not until the Dark Lord cursed my wrists."

"Dumbledore still deserved to die."

"He deserved to be punished," Harry said, taking a shaky breath. His fear had lessened since taking in Riddle, but now it was building again. A fear of death and something else he couldn't quite pin down. "But I didn't have to kill him. I didn't do it in self-defence or because someone was threatening me or my friends. I did it because I wanted to. I killed him in cold blood."

He wasn't sure what Snape heard in his voice, but he felt Snape turn towards him and heard the uncertainty in his voice when he asked, "What are you saying?"

"I shouldn't have done it." There was a prickle of pain beneath his skin that made his voice shake and his fear grow worse. "I knew my friends were free of the Word of Death Curse. I only killed Dumbledore because I wanted to, but look what it did—Voldemort took over and I was—I was—and Tyler became a squib even though he doesn't feel like one and Riddle possessed him and he nearly died because of me and—and—"

"Harry, calm down." Snape stood, moving closer with his hands held out, but stopping short of touching him. "It's alright, none of that was your fault—"

"It was!" He felt tears spill down one side of his face, his right tear ducts damaged beyond repair. The prickle of pain grew into a thrum, pulsing through him with every heartbeat, racing through his veins and infusing every part of him. "Everything that happened, happened because I was selfish. Because instead of dealing with Voldemort as soon as I knew my friends were safe, I killed Dumbledore."

He hugged himself, hands clenching hard on his arms, curling over with a sob. He heard footsteps outside and felt the door crash open, heard the Assistant and Draco and Tyler's voices talking together—

"Severus, what's—" "Harry!" "Is he dying?"

 _You're going to kill us,_ Riddle said, but he didn't sound afraid. He sounded as if, if he'd had a body, then he'd have been crying, too. _You're going to kill us both._

"Harry, please," Snape begged, but Harry didn't hear anything else he might have said.

"I shouldn't have killed him," he sobbed, and then screamed as his fractured soul pieced itself back together.

And then he died.

* * *

 **AN:** Two more chapters to go, so don't hate me just yet :)


	58. Chapter 58

**Chapter 58**

Harry heard it said that hell was other people. As an introvert and torture victim, he never doubted that sentiment.

Right now, hell appeared to be almost empty.

It also looked an awful lot like the Great Hall at Hogwarts.

He stood in the centre, the house and staff tables gone. He could see, though his eyes were still mismatched, and he had no scars on his flesh but the lightning bolt on his forehead. He wore jeans and a jumper and he stood healthy and relaxed, but a little bit transparent. When he looked at his hand, he could see the flagstones through it.

Riddle stood opposite him, dressed in robes. He looked like himself—the same teenager that almost escaped the diary—except stitches ran along his face, like the marks of Frankenstein's monster.

"If this is hell," Riddle said, his voice filling the hall, "it's not so bad."

"This ain't hell."

As one, Harry and Riddle turned. Crowley stood between them and the doors, no different than he had been ten years ago when Harry met him in Little Whinging. He seemed smaller now, but Harry knew it was just because Harry himself was taller.

"What is it?" Harry asked. He wasn't afraid, he realised. He didn't feel anything at all.

Riddle stood by him. "Purgatory?"

"Of a kind," said another voice, and they turned again.

Two more people had appeared in the hall, a man and a woman, each stood the same distance from Harry and Riddle as Crowley did, and with a space between them so that, with Crowley, they stood at a triangle around the two teenagers.

The man was skeletal white and just as thin. He wore a black suit with a white shirt and grey tie, and both hands rested on a simple wooden cane. Looking at him, Harry finally felt a spark of fear. It wasn't a familiar fear—fear of pain and torment—it was something primal, something harkening back to the very beginning of humanity—of life.

Despite that, Harry's interest was held far more by the woman. She wore a simple skirt and blouse with sensible shoes, pretty and young, with red hair and bright green eyes that matched one of Harry's own.

"Mum."

The word come came out in a whisper, but filled the hall, and he moved without even thinking about it. He felt no apprehension at being touched nor concern that his transparent state meant he was incorporeal. Her arms opened and he stepped into her embrace, wrapping his own around her and ducking his head to bury his face in her shoulder. She smelt of nothing, was neither warm nor cool, and her touch only inspired the thinnest sensations of love and hope and peace, but it was enough.

"Mum."

"Hello, Harry."

"What do you mean this is a kind of purgatory? Who are you?"

At Riddle's questions, Harry reluctantly pulled away from Lily. Riddle still stood in the centre of the room, facing the unknown man.

"I am Death."

It was an unusual proclamation, but Harry never doubted it.

"You have a choice," Death said. "By 'you', I mean Harry."

"What choice?" Harry said at the same time Riddle asked, "Why him?"

"The oldest choice," Death said, leaning forwards on his cane, black eyes boring into Harry. "The choice of who lives and who dies."

"Isn't that your choice?" Harry said. "Sir?"

"It certainly should be," Death said in a voice that made something deep inside Harry shudder. He was afraid of Death in a way he'd never been afraid of Voldemort, but at the same time he felt more able to face him without cowering.

"The problem," Death went on, "is that you two have been messing with your souls. It is something that should never have been done."

"I undid it," Riddle said, like a child wanting to assure their parent they were truly sorry for breaking an antique. "I put mine back together."

"I put a bit of mine back together," Harry said, feeling like he should mention it but all too aware that it carried little weight.

"Correctly so, yes, unlike him, who may as well be held together with duct tape and superglue. That it why it's your choice."

All eyes looked to Harry. "I don't understand, sir. What am I meant to decide?"

Lily's hand settled on his shoulder. "Your soul is incomplete, so you can't move on, sweetie."

"I can't go to hell?" The prospect didn't fill him with the relief it should have. His emotions were simply too dulled here.

Crowley spoke up. "Don't get ahead of yourself just yet, Little Evans. You owe me a debt and I plan to claim it."

"You'll do nothing," Lily said sharply. "Harry will make his choice, Death will mark the souls, and I will escort them. You have no purpose here, demon."

"I'm here to remind Harry that he owes me a debt. If he's any sense of decency, he'll pay up."

"Escort them?" Harry said, and Lily smiled at him.

"I'm a reaper. It's my job to move souls to their destined afterlife, wherever that may be."

"What about me?" Riddle asked. "You're all talking about Harry. What happens to me?"

"Either you go to hell, or you stay here," Death said.

Riddle looked around, frowning. "In the Great Hall? You mean I become a ghost?"

"No. This— " he gestured around with his cane "—is Harry's purgatory. Elsewhere, as Lily has named it. The place where a quarter of Harry's soul has been for little under a year. The real purgatory is a place for the dead souls of non-humans. You're human and therefore destined for either heaven or hell—or you would be, if you hadn't connected your bodies and souls."

Harry and Riddle glanced at each other, confused, and Lily explained. "When Voldemort resurrected himself three years ago, he used your blood in the ritual, Harry. The same blood which carries my last protection. So long as that protection lives, so can you."

"The body," Riddle realised. "I never destroyed my body when I took the last bit of soul. As long as that lives, Harry's body lives, and he lives."

"Especially as a piece of his soul remains earthbound," Lily agreed.

"So I can't die," Harry summarised. "My body and my soul. So what choice do I have? Am I stuck here, too?"

"That is your choice," Death told him. "You have three options ahead of you. I have the ability to restore your soul to a whole piece. Those silly little enchantments you put around your Horcrux are nothing to me. I will take it and return you to a single piece, and you can move on as you are meant to."

"With me," Crowley said, smiling nastily.

"Alternately, you can remain here as you are, half a soul, stuck in a purgatory. You body will fall into a deep coma, never living yet never dying."

"And the third choice?"

"You can return to your body and continue your life, living with half a soul until you die again, through natural means or other."

"Well, that's obvious," Riddle said. "Go back."

Harry glanced at him, then looked back to Death. "There's more to it than that, though, isn't there?"

Death smiled, a humourless expression, rather like seeing a skull whose teeth were forever locked in the rictus of a smile.

"You choose for him, too," he said, pointing at Riddle with his cane. "Your souls have long been bound together, but death separates you. Both of you have a claim to the body of Harry Evans, but it will host only one soul from now on. You, Riddle, have spent enough time in it that it's possible for you to claim it as your own from this point. You, Harry, as the original owner and the more powerful of you, can stop him.

"These are your choices, Harry: be made whole, pay your debt to the demons, and leave Riddle to either drag himself back to your body or fail and pass on in natural death."

Harry wouldn't pick that, he knew he couldn't. He wasn't willing to go to hell that easily.

"Or, send Riddle to pay your debt and return to your own body, living with half a soul. You will keep the gifts granted to you, the demons will no longer be permitted to pursue you, and when your Horcrux is destroyed and you die again then your destined afterlife will be determined by the same means as any other person."

Harry wasn't sure about that. He felt guilty at the thought of making Riddle pay his debt for him, and in truth he was a little afraid to go back to life. He'd never truly let himself believe in life after this day; the future spread before him was empty and he didn't know how to fill it.

"Or, fight for it. You will both remain here until one of you drags yourself into Harry Evans' body. Should Riddle succeed, you, Harry, will remain here until his next death. Half a soul pays no debt, and when Riddle dies you will both pass on to hell."

"And if Harry succeeds?" Riddle asked, not taking his gaze off Harry.

"Then you are dead, to exist as the dead do. Returning as a ghost is beyond you, but this is a valid afterlife, so you may remain here for all eternity, but know this: No other human souls knows of this afterlife, so no other soul will pass on here. Eternity here is eternity alone. Or you can submit to my reaper and pass to the previously established afterlife to which you were destined."

"And my debt to the demons?" Harry asked.

Crowley's smile was evident in his tone. "The debt'll be unpaid and I'll keep sending my pups after you and your Horcrux until I get you."

"Sir," Harry said to Death, "what happens to Riddle if I let you put my soul back together? If I pay the debt to Crowley myself?"

"Then there is nothing to keep Riddle from returning to your body except his own strength. Only one soul needs to die today, by my reckoning, so should you move on then I am not required to mark him dead. He may not manage the return to life, but if he does then your body and life are his—forever."

Lily stepped away from Harry, who drifted back to stand with Riddle, putting them once again at the centre of the three adults.

"Will you condemn me to hell?" Riddle asked. "Will you make me pay your debt?"

"I don't know," Harry said quietly. "I think it's where you'd go anyway, for everything you've done."

"I shouldn't pay your debt. You made the deal with Crowley; you should pay it."

"And let you return to my body?"

"Why not? I have plans, Harry. More plans than you. I can go on to rebuild the world my other self destroyed. I can make it better, I can make up for what I've done. This is my second chance, and I won't fail this time."

"But you'd leave me behind. You'd take your second chance and leave me to hell."

"You made a deal—"

"I was a _child!_ " His anger wasn't half what it might have been in the real world, but it was enough. "I was a scared child, what did I know? I saw a way to escape a horrible situation and I took it. I had no idea what I was dealing with, what I was condemning myself to. I shouldn't have to pay for something I didn't understand."

"Then what?" Riddle stepped closer and held out his hands. Harry took them. Unlike Lily, Riddle was warm to Harry's touch, real. "Are we to remain here, fighting in this empty place until one of us wins or the end of days comes?"

"We'd deserve it. Do either of us deserve a second chance?"

"Doesn't everyone?"

"But only one of us can," Harry pointed out.

Riddle's grip tightened on Harry's hands. "Why shouldn't it be me? I'm the one with plans. What would you do with your life if you got it back? Could you even handle it without me? I know how relieved you were to have me back in your head. What would be the point in you going back to life only to waste it?"

He had a point. Harry had no idea what he would do with his life. He didn't care to enact Riddle's plan for a wizarding country. He'd never made any real plans for the future; at most, he would probably study history more.

"You'd obsess over history, wouldn't you?" Riddle said. "You'd waste your future on the past."

"It's my right," Harry said, "and I can't just let you go without me. You're my responsibility, Riddle."

"I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself, Harry."

"It's everyone else I'm worried about."

"I wouldn't hurt anyone. I can't risk my soul and it'd be a poor repayment to your sacrifice." He stepped closer, dipping his head to press his forehead to Harry's. "Give me this chance, Harry. I promise you I'll be the best person I can be. I'll make the world a better place in your name. I won't hurt anyone; I'll protect everyone."

Harry couldn't say the idea wasn't tempting. Hell scared him, but so did a looming empty future. Riddle would make something of Harry's life; he would make sure Harry _had_ a future. If he really did avoid becoming Voldemort again, he could make a real difference. He would make life better for everyone and Harry couldn't claim that.

Except, would it really be better for _everyone_?

He stepped back, not letting go of Riddle's hands but putting enough distance between them that their arms stretched.

"What about Dad and Draco?"

Riddle's brow furrowed. "What about them?"

"If you went back, what would you do about them? Would you tell them you're you? Or pretend to be me?"

"It wouldn't be fair to lie to them… I'd tell them the truth. I couldn't stand to pursue your relationship with Draco anyway. I wouldn't hurt them, if that's what you're worried about. I'd have to make sure your daddy doesn't kill me, though."

Harry looked down at their hands. He swung them slightly, clenched his fingers around Riddle's, then sighed and let go, stepping further back.

"No."

"No?"

Harry shook his head. "I'd let you have the world, Riddle, but not Draco and Dad."

"I don't want them."

"But you'd be there, in my body, taking my life. I'd be abandoning them and I don't want to do that."

Riddle stared at him. "You're refusing me because you don't want Draco to be alone? I'm sure he'll find someone else. You can barely stand to hug him for more than a few seconds anyway. He'd be better off with Tyler. At least Tyler likes sex."

Harry glared. "I liked sex, but that's got nothing to do with it. I love Draco, and he loves me. I can't just abandon him without even a goodbye. I ran him off! The last thing I did was cower away from him."

"Which is reason enough that you shouldn't bother going back. You'd be a mess. What kind of relationship would you have with Draco? Your daddy would be no better. He's given up everything to look after you; are you going to make him keep doing that?"

"If you go back, he'll kill you."

"He'll try," Riddle snarled, showing his first sign of emotion.

"He'll kill himself if I don't go back, you know he will."

"Let him. What life does your pathetic daddy have? He was a miserable teacher, he spent most of your last school year drinking in his rotten little house, he's been no help to you in your recovery—"

"That's not true."

"—and we both know he's only lived this long because of you. He _wants_ to die. Draco wants to have a real relationship. You want to ruin both their lives by forcing yourself on them? Forcing them to spend their lives looking after you instead of doing what they want?"

Harry hesitated. No, he didn't want to be a burden on Snape or Draco, and he knew he wouldn't be any better after this than he had been for the past few weeks. He might have been getting better, but he still had a long way to go before he was anything approaching normal.

But he didn't want Snape to kill himself. He didn't want Draco to move on to someone else, either, but he wasn't entirely sure his presence would stop that happening. Draco might get tired of him or realise he didn't want to deal with all Harry's issues and move on to someone else.

There was nothing to do about Draco, but he could save Snape. Maybe Snape did want to die, but Harry couldn't just let him do it. So Snape had been miserable for most of his adult life—he just needed a chance. He'd been a teacher to stay close by Dumbledore, which he'd done for the sake of the war, which was over. Voldemort was gone, and if Harry went back then even Riddle was gone. Snape would have chance to move on, to actually do something he enjoyed. Harry had no idea what that might be, but he wanted Snape to have the chance.

Riddle saw the decision on his face. "You can't do this to me."

"It's my body," Harry said. "It's my life. I don't have to give it up to you."

"I'll do more with your life than you ever would. You're a pathetic little boy with no ambition. If you hadn't had me in your brain, you'd have ended up in Hufflepuff."

His brown eyes flashed red, just briefly, but it had never happened before, as hallucination or possession. Harry wasn't sure Riddle even realised, but it was enough for him. It was a reminder that for all the good Riddle had done him, Voldemort had done much worse.

He stepped back. "So?"

Riddle blinked. "What?"

"I'm not a Hogwarts student. I can't ever go back, and you're a parasite who hasn't been a real student for over fifty years. Who cares what house I was in. Do you think my life would have been any better if I'd been in Hufflepuff, or Ravenclaw, or Gryffindor? I still would have had you in my head. If I'm pathetic, it's only because _you_ made me that way."

He shoved Riddle hard, both hands slamming into his chest and sending him to the floor. Riddle sat there, gaping up at Harry.

"You spent years whispering insults in my head. You tortured me. You killed my mother so I ended up with the Dursleys. Its _your_ fault I ever made that demon deal in the first place so you can damn well pay for it. I don't care how pathetic I am, you're not having my body. You're not having Draco, you're not having Dad, and you're _not_ having my life."

The blood was pulsing through him. He felt alive again. He felt afraid again, too, and not just of Death, but he didn't care because he felt hopeful and angry and justified and loving.

He _felt_.

Death tapped his cane one against the stone floor. "This is your choice: to have Riddle pay your debt to the demons and return to your body as half a soul?"

"Don't do this to me," Riddle whispered. His tone was begging, but his eyes flickered red again.

Harry looked at Death. "Yes."

Death merely nodded.

"You made a good decision, Harry."

He looked at Lily, who was smiling at him. His stomach flipped and he smiled back. How could he not—it was his _mother_. He stalked over and pulled her into a hug, and this time she smelt like wildflowers and she was warm and when her arms wrapped around him he felt so happy he burst into tears.

"I love you," Harry said wetly.

"I love you, too."

"I'm sorry for getting your shirt wet."

Lily chuckled. "At least you haven't vomited on it."

Harry sniffed and drew back. "Why would I vomit on you?"

"You did it plenty as a baby."

"Oh, right."

She wiped his cheeks. "When you get back, tell your father I forgive him as long as he keeps looking after you."

"Forgive him for what?"

She smiled. "He'll know. And would you do something to help James? I know he's not your dad and not your responsibility, but I hate seeing him Bound to Lucius Malfoy. He deserves better."

"I'm not sure I can do anything about that," Harry told her. He could feel a Soul Bond—a stream of magic tying the Assistant's chest to Snape's—but he hadn't tried doing anything about it. Mostly because the Assistant very firmly told him not to.

Lily squeezed his shoulder. "I know. But if there's anything you can do for him, I'd appreciate it. Are you ready to go back?"

Harry looked around. Riddle was still sat on the floor, his shoulders now hunched and his face drawn. He looked pathetic and miserable and Harry started to feel sorry for him. Everything he'd said was true, but Riddle had also been his friend and Harry felt bad for sacrificing him to hell. It was ridiculous and twisted and a shrink would probably have a field day with it, but it was true.

"Just a minute," Harry said to Lily, and walked over to Riddle, crouching by him. Riddle turned his head away.

"Going to gloat now?"

"You should know me better than that. I just…" he reached out to touch Riddle's shoulder, but Riddle flinched and Harry withdrew his hand again. "I'm sorry."

"Then don't do this."

"You can't have my life."

Riddle looked at him, scrambling up to his knees, expression pleading. "Then stay here with me. You don't have to sacrifice me to that demon. Keep us both here. I won't fight you, we can remain here forever."

Harry bit his lip, but movement to the side made him glance over at Lily, and he shook his head. He knew without asking that he wasn't going to see his mum after this day, not until he died again, but he could see his dd, and Draco, and maybe his other friends. He couldn't give that up just for Riddle.

Riddle saw the answer in his face. He slumped down, chin dropping to his chest and eyes closing.

"Go," he said softly. "Go, and I hope you're miserable and your daddy dies and Draco leaves you to shag that murderous little squib."

Harry wasn't going to justify that with any sort of response. He stood and turned away, but took only a step when a hand clamped around his wrist. He tried to jerk away, but Riddle's hold was tight. He looked up at Harry now, red eyes burning with anger. When he spoke, it was in Parseltongue.

" _Just remember, Harry: when you die, you go to hell, and I'll be there waiting for you._ "

He let go and Harry staggered away, rubbing his wrist. He backed up to stand by Lily, who put an arm around his shoulders.

"Time to go, sweetheart."

Harry nodded, letting her lead him to the door. Beyond it was only darkness, the entrance hall unlit by much as a glimmer, and Harry paused on the threshold to look back. Crowley reached out as if to pluck something from the air in front of Riddle, and Death glided forwards to stand over the kneeling figure, lifting his cane in both hands.

In the last instant before it all vanished, Harry saw them as they truly were: the demon, a horrific visage worthy of the fear they inspired; Death, both a man and a skeleton and a being no mortal could truly comprehend; and Voldemort Riddle, a man built of fear and hatred and anger to the very end.

* * *

"Harry? _Harry!_ "

Draco's voice sounded distant to Severus, even compared to the way things had become quieter since he lost his ear. He stood over the bed, staring down at Harry's body. After screaming like someone put the Cruciatus Curse on him, Harry had collapsed sideways. Severus couldn't move, not even to stop Draco throwing himself on the bed and grabbing Harry by the shoulders.

Harry hadn't flinched, and Draco hadn't got shocked.

Now Draco was clinging to Harry and sobbing, and Tyler stood by the door wide-eyed and shaking, and the Assistant stood by Severus, not touching or speaking.

Then Harry inhaled. Draco dropped him, hiccupping as he tried to gasp halfway through a sob. They all stared as Harry inhaled again, his eyelids fluttered and then opened, mismatched eyes staring straight up.

Tyler took a tentative step back. "Is he a zombie?"

"Zombies don't have souls," Harry said.

"Harry!" Draco yelled, reaching for him again, then jerked back with a yelp of pain.

"Sorry," Harry said, but he edged away from Draco as he sat up. "Are you okay?"

Draco shook his hands out. "I'll live. Uh, that wasn't meant… are _you_ okay? What happened? I thought you were dead."

"You screamed like you were dying," Tyler said, moving closer to the bed.

"I didn't die," Harry said. Kiwi appeared in his lap and he wrapped both arms around her.

"Why'd you scream?" Draco asked. "You sounded like you were under the Cruciatus Curse."

Harry shook his head, then pressed his chin into Kiwi's fur, leaning back against the headboard. "I, um… I put my soul back together."

Severus felt as much as heard something crack.

"Ow, Severus!"

He looked down at a tugging in his hand and realised he'd been clutching the Assistant's hand. He abruptly let go and the Assistant cradled his hand in the other.

"Alright?" Severus asked him gruffly.

"Oh, sure, just a joint or two out of place," the Assistant said, but he smiled thinly. Severus nodded stiffly and returned his attention to Harry.

"What do you mean you put your soul back together?" His voice came out sterner than he meant, but what Harry said scared him.

"I, um… I sort of… madeaHorcrux. But I got it back so it's okay."

"You—"

"The first one or the second one?"

Severus turned to Tyler. "Excuse me?"

Tyler's brow furrowed. "He made two. You did, right? One from—"

"Shut up!"

Severus whirled on Harry. " _Explain!_ "

"I—"

"He told _you_ he made Horcruxes?" Draco interrupted, talking to Tyler, looking both angry and hurt.

Tyler held up both hands, shaking his head and backing up a step. "No, he didn't. But Riddle knew. I think it was his suggestion."

"Of course it was that bastard's suggestion. This is why I got mad that you took him back, Harry. You can't trust—"

"He's gone."

Harry's voice was so flat that it silenced Draco in mid-rant. He clutched Kiwi tighter, drawing his knees up, shaking slightly. Draco instantly looked guilty.

"He's gone and…"

Sharp pain suddenly shot through Severus' left forearm, making him hiss and grab it. Harry twitched at the same moment. Severus wrenched his sleeve up, turned his arm outwards, and stared down at his perfectly clear forearm.

"The Dark Mark…" Draco said.

"Voldemort's dead," Harry said. "His body's dead and Riddle is gone, taken to hell. He's never coming back ever again."

Severus ran his fingers over his forearm, but there was absolutely nothing marking his skin now, not so much as scar left behind. Even during the years when Voldemort was missing, his arm hadn't felt or looked like that, still tainted by the shadow of the Dark Mark.

"I'm free."

"Enjoy it," the Assistant said. Something in his tone made Severus look up.

"Is yours gone?"

The Assistant tugged up his sleeve, revealing the mark still on his arm.

"Why isn't yours gone?" Draco asked.

"Because I wasn't marked by your Dark Lord."

"But he could summon you with it," Severus said.

The Assistant shrugged, sleeve falling down again. "The time loop—it's so twisted by so much crap, I've no idea how some things work. Weren't we about to find out why Harry's been making Horcruxes?"

Severus could guess, but the Assistant was right. He wanted an explanation.

"Harry, I'm going to sit on the bed," he warned before doing so, perching on the edge. "Please explain to us what happened and tell us about the Horcruxes, and we'll keep calm and not shout at you."

Harry sighed, but only asked for a drink before agreeing.

By the end of it, Severus wanted a bottle of vodka and Draco was pacing. Draco had looked to interrupt several times, only keeping his mouth shut when Severus glared at him. He didn't want to risk them upsetting Harry when he was revealing something so important.

Now he was finished, Severus had no idea what to say. He couldn't berate Harry for murdering his uncle, not after everything the man had done to him. He couldn't even complain about Harry doing whatever it took to survive the hellhounds, even if it was the darkest magics known to man.

He hesitated to rejoice at Riddle's death, not when it clearly bothered Harry that he'd lost him even if he didn't regret his choice.

And was there _anything_ he could say to the fact Harry had apparently met his mother in the afterlife and she was now a reaper and sent him back with a message of forgiveness for Severus himself? Conditional forgiveness, true, and he wasn't even sure which of his many sins she was forgiving him for, but Severus didn't mind that. If Lily really could see what was going on in the world even while she was dead, he wouldn't have trusted an unconditional forgiveness. He didn't deserve that.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. In the end, all he could think to say was, "Is there anything else you have to tell us? Oh, you are joking!"

Harry's brow furrowed. "I feel like there was something important about that afterlife place, but I can't think what."

"Sorry," the Assistant said, "can we back up a sec?"

Severus dropped his hand and looked over at him, settled into the armchair in the corner of the room, the one Severus usually sat in. "What is it?"

The Assistant glanced at him, mouth twisted in a deep frown, then looked back to Harry. "You say you split your soul when you killed Dumbledore."

"Yeah."

"But you didn't do the Horcrux preparation beforehand."

"No, but I didn't make a Horcrux exactly. That bit of my soul didn't leave me until—"

"Yeah, see that's the problem," the Assistant said. He leant forwards, elbows on his knees and eyes fixed on Harry. "With you, I can believe you split your soul even without the Horcrux preparation, but—"

"I thought murder split the soul," Draco interrupted.

"It is," Tyler said. "Cold blooded murder."

The Assistant shook his head and hands. "It's not that simple though. If it were, any old bugger could make a Horcrux. Why do you think there's such an unpleasant ritual involved in Horcrux making?"

"What is involved?" Draco asked.

"You don't want to know," Tyler said with a shudder.

"He right," the Assistant agreed. "My point is, the soul is an incredibly versatile thing. Splitting it apart is about as easy as chopping down a tree with your bare hand. You can damage it and taint it, and murder goes a long way to putting a nasty dent in it, but you need that little extra shove to actually split it. Even if you manage to completely separate a piece of it, as long as it remains in your body, it usually begins to rejoin, even without remorse. It won't fully merge into one again, but it can't remain in close contact without re-establishing some kind of connection. It's why books on Horcrux creation advise the pieces be secreted away in separate locations. It's supposed to be rather uncomfortable to have one nearby."

They all looked at Harry, who seemed to realise their attention was on him because he shifted uncomfortably. "It was a bit unpleasant."

"Where is your Horcrux?" Draco asked. Harry said nothing. "You don't trust me with that?"

"I can't trust anyone with that," Harry said, apologetic but stubborn.

"Nevermind that," Snape said, though he was keen to know the location himself. "Assistant, what is your issue here?"

"My issue is that he shouldn't have been able to eject that broken bit of soul, not without the preparations and a ready-made vessel, and certainly not weeks after he actually split it."

"Voldemort made me a Horcrux without meaning to," Harry pointed out.

"But he intended to make _a_ Horcrux," the Assistant said. "He'd done the prep; the only thing that went wrong was the intended vessel, and that was likely only because of the miscast Killing Curse. To keep a split soul in you and then eject it weeks later—and to some alternate plane of existence…"

"It's true," Harry said sullenly. "I did go to another place."

"Oh, I believe that," the Assistant said dismissively. "I'm a dimension traveller; I'd be a fucking moron to doubt the existence of alternate planes. But you shouldn't have been able to send that bit of your soul to anywhere."

"Even for Harry?" Severus said. "You've said before that his magic works by his will. If he wanted it gone then it went."

The Assistant made an uncertain noise. "I mean, maybe? He has limits, we all know that, and the soul…" He shrugged. "Souls are powerful and strong. Messing about with them… casting soul magic— _unintentionally_ casting soul magic—the strongest magic known to man… that's power that scares me, and that should tell you enough. There's very little that scares me."

For a moment there was silence. Severus looked from the Assistant to Harry. Harry's power had frightened him since the first time he threw Severus across a room, but he had to admit it scared him more now. He'd read about souls in his efforts to research a way to escape Harry's deal and he knew it was a tough thing. He'd never found anything explicitly informative, but he'd read enough to know the Assistant had the right of it. Even before that, he'd known that soul magic wasn't something to take lightly, something he'd only ever disregarded when he took the Assistant's Bond.

Draco stalked up to the bed and sat. " _I'm_ not afraid of his power."

The Assistant smiled. "Forgive me if your youthful bravado doesn't ease my time honoured wariness, Draco."

"It's not bravado. Harry doesn't scare me."

"You've got the advantage of knowing he loves and trusts you," Tyler said. "Unless you do something to hurt him, he'll never turn on you. The rest of us don't have that reassurance."

Harry lifted his face from where it was buried in Kiwi's fur. "I'll only hurt people who hurt me. I'll even try to stop shocking people who touch me. I am sorry for that."

The Assistant leant back in his chair. "That's nice and all, Harry, but I'm still scared of your power. Or at least, as scared as I can be when my time loop's resetting tomorrow."

"So what now?" Tyler asked. "Harry's deal is paid, we don't have to wait on the hellhounds coming for him now."

Harry would live. Severus felt a lightness in his heart that he hadn't in decades.

But it was still tinged by… sadness. His gaze cut across to the Assistant. Tomorrow he would die, or whatever it was that happened when his loop reset. Severus wanted to say that he didn't care, but the truth was he did. The Assistant was his. Over time, he'd gained a degree of fondness for him, but it was as much his sense of ownership as genuine feelings that rejected the idea of him dying.

He looked away, to Harry, still hugging his bear, still fragile and scared, but he'd had more confidence in his voice when he spoke. Dying—or whatever he'd gone through—had changed him. Hopefully for the better. Hopefully it might help him recover further. Harry would need that now that he was guaranteed a future.

The Assistant shifted. Severus didn't look around at him, even when he spoke.

"Tomorrow I die. That's my 'what now'. As for the rest of you—you've got long futures ahead of you. Your 'what now' is whatever you make of it."


	59. Chapter 59

**Chapter 59**

Harry stood in the garden, feeling the heat of the pyre warm his front, listening to the wood crackle and the faint underlying sizzle of cooking meat. Snape still stood at his side, hand loose in Harry's grip, but Draco and Tyler had retreated back to the house, along with Dobby. The Assistant's body was halfway to ashes now.

His death had been extremely anti-climatic. He'd fallen asleep shortly before sunset, and then simply died, like an old man at the end of his life. Harry doubted he'd have noticed the passing, even if he could see, if he hadn't felt the magic around the Assistant fall abruptly still. The chain between him and Snape had dissolved away, moving from the Assistant to Snape, and when it reached Snape he'd clutched his chest, breath hitching.

Burning him was Tyler's suggestion. No one knew what else to do with his body, not sure where would be a good place to bury him.

Now, in the dark of night with only the crackle of the fire and the chirp of crickets far away, Harry said quietly, "Dad?"

Snape didn't answer. Harry realised he stood on the side of Snape's lost ear and spoke so softly he might not have been heard so he repeated himself, louder this time. Snape still didn't answer, but his hand tightened slightly around Harry's.

"Did you like having a Slave?"

He sensed Snape's head turning to look down at him now and imagined he was frowning.

"Did I _like_ it?"

"Yes."

Snape looked forward again. "I… I don't know. I did, but I don't know how much of that was just the magic of the Bond."

"Do you want another one?"

Snape looked down at him again, his voice turning sharp. "Why are you asking that?"

"It would show if you liked it or not, if you wanted another one."

Snape didn't immediately reply, still looking at him, but Harry said nothing and pushed Snape out when he tried gently looking into Harry's mind.

"I suppose," Snape said slowly, "that I do miss having that connection." He paused, then said, "I notice its absence more than I ever felt it when he was here."

"Are you going to kill yourself?"

Snape jerked, wrenching himself out of Harry's grip and turning on him. " _What?_ "

"Are you going to kill yourself?" Harry asked again, perfectly calm.

"Why on earth would you ask me that?"

"Because I thought you would, if I'd died."

"You _haven't_ died," Snape snapped.

"I'm getting better though," Harry said. "Things are going to be different now. I have to decide what to do with myself. I can't just stay here and do nothing forever. You don't need to look after me all the time."

"And you think I'll kill myself because of that?"

"You haven't said no," Harry pointed out.

Snape turned away from him, stepping closer to the pyre and folding his arms over his chest. "I won't abandon you so long as you need me."

Harry didn't point out what that meant—that if the day came that Harry didn't need him, Snape would kill himself.

"When I was dead," Harry said, and felt Snape stiffen even at a distance, the magic around him whirling tensely, "Mum asked me to try and help James."

"What does that have to do with me?" Snape asked tersely. "You broke Lucius out of Azkaban once; you can surely do the same for Potter, though you put more Muggle schoolchildren at risk if you do."

It was all over the news that James had attacked a Muggle primary school, but it wasn't Azkaban that concerned Harry. He'd seen enough of James with Lucius and Sirius, and the Assistant with Snape, to know that there was a good chance James only did what he did so he could be locked in prison with Lucius.

No, what he wanted from Snape was something else.

"Will you take his Bond?"

Snape whirled and Harry couldn't help twitching away from him. "Absolutely not!"

"Why?"

" _Why?_ Harry, I hate the man! I always have. If you were thinking that I wouldn't kill myself if I had him Bound to me, you can think again. I wouldn't care about killing him through my own suicide."

"Mum said she didn't like him being Bound to Lucius. Wouldn't you do it—"

"Don't," Snape snarled. Harry backed up a step, but Snape for once didn't temper his voice. "Don't you dare try and use your mother against me. If you want to save Potter from Lucius, take the Bond yourself."

"I can't. I don't think so, anyway."

"Why not?"

"I don't think it works with a split soul. Voldemort tried to make Antonin Dolohov put it on me once."

"That makes sense," Snape said, calming down. "I'm still not taking Potter's."

He turned away from Harry, looking to the pyre once more, and then he sighed and started towards the house. Harry didn't move from his spot, but he called after Snape.

"You owe me."

Snape stopped, but didn't turn to face Harry.

"You owe me for not being there when I was a kid and you owe me for saving your life when Voldemort ordered me to kill you. If I hadn't done it, you know he'd have done it himself, and he'd probably have given you a traitor's death."

Snape turned, slowly. "What are you asking of me, Harry?"

"I want you to take James' Bond."

"Because I owe you." Snape's voice was as cold as Harry had ever heard it. "You would give me your forgiveness if I did this?"

"Yes," Harry said, and meant it. He still felt some bitterness whenever he thought of the ways Snape, his father, had failed him, but he'd suffered so much at the hands of other people that he simply didn't have the energy to hold a true grudge over it. "As long as you didn't treat him badly, or kill yourself, or anything like that."

"I would have to leave," Snape said.

"What do you mean?"

"I couldn't bring Potter into this house. It wouldn't be fair on Narcissa."

Harry hadn't thought of that. Malfoy Manor had become home in the last few months; he hadn't even considered that Snape might eventually leave.

But he'd made his decision. He had to honour his mother's request.

"I know. You can have the house in Coleford. Will you do it?"

Snape was silent. Not for the first time, Harry wished he could make out expressions with his magical sight so he could read Snape's emotions in it. He didn't even have Tyler or Draco with him so he could Wish his mind to see what their eyes did.

Eventually, Snape said quietly, "Very well. But you can never use that against me again. You can never try to guilt me by bringing up my neglect."

Harry nodded. Without another word, Snape turned and swept away, leaving Harry to wonder if he'd just done something he'd regret.

* * *

Minerva stood outside the Ministry holding cell and tugged her cloak tighter about her shoulders. She wasn't cold, but there was a chill in her bones anyway. Inside the cell, James lay unconscious on the hard bed. She'd come to take his Animancupium Bond.

The Order of the Phoenix was no more, but most of the members knew about James' predicament, Kingsley and Tonks among them. In the wake of James taking a Muggle school hostage, Kingsley realised something had to be done. As James hadn't actually hurt anyone—as Minerva heard it, even the young boy turned into a tiger had been thoroughly delighted by the adventure until his memory of it was erased—Kingsley was reluctant to sentence James to Azkaban, despite that being his intention.

Kingsley managed to convince the Wizengamot to agree to an alternate sentence: if someone could be found to take James' Animancupium, James would be put under probation under his new Master's watch. The Master would be responsible for making sure James commit no more crimes.

Finding someone to take the Bond was the biggest problem. Suspicion would come on anyone who volunteered themself, given that they were volunteering to own a slave for the rest of their life, and no person who wanted that could be easily trusted.

When Minerva heard about it, she'd not immediately considered herself. How could she? The idea of having a slave—and worse, a magically bound one—was reprehensible. But as she began to imagine what other people might end up taking it—at best, kind strangers; at worst, vicious reprobates—she wondered if volunteering herself might be the best thing for James. She liked to think she would be a good Master to him. The fact that she didn't want it even after the idea occurred to her surely worked in her favour.

Her only apprehensions were their ages and what it would mean for her career. Would it be safe to have him at Hogwarts with her, or would she have to retire? She wasn't entirely opposed to the idea, even if she wasn't quite at retiring age yet. She wasn't quite sure what she would do with herself if she did; she would get bored very quickly without anything to do.

As for the age issue—he would die if she did. If she didn't live to a 130—and many didn't, dying in their eleventh or twelfth decade, if not sooner—then he'd never seen see 100.

Still, she'd presented the idea to Kingsley, who agreed it was a good idea.

"I trust you'd be good to him," he said, and she appreciated the vote of confidence. "The only other options aren't much younger than you, so there isn't much point fretting about that. As for Hogwarts, I don't think it'll be a problem. We managed to verify most of the information he gave us on the Death Eaters' activities last summer, and it doesn't look like he was too involved in hurting anyone."

" 'Too involved'?"

"He stood aside as Malfoy and others tortured and killed, but he never did it himself. Most of Malfoy's work was politic during that time anyway. James mostly seems to have acted as an aide, and provided finances."

Her lips pursed, disliking it even knowing James had had no choice.

"You can always order him not to harm the children," Kingsley pointed out.

Minerva winced. "I'd prefer not to order him to do anything. I'd want to give him as much freedom as I possibly could."

"Exactly what would make you a good candidate."

He'd given her a book about the Bond so she knew exactly what it involved, and it hadn't made her any more eager about the idea. If anything, she was less enthusiastic. She asked who the other options were, but it was Wizengamot members, people James hardly knew. Minerva really was the best option.

So she'd come today, a Saturday morning, to do it. She left the school to Aurora Sinistra, her deputy, and would take the weekend to adjust to owning a Slave.

That had been the plan, anyway. When she tried to perform the ritual to transfer the Bond, James had fought violently. He'd screamed obscenities and insults, spitting things so cruel it very nearly drove her to tears. They'd known he'd be resistant to the transfer—he'd already raged against the very idea—but she hadn't expected that.

Kingsley had stunned him, eventually, but Minerva lost her nerve.

"He shouldn't be so unpleasant once it's done," Kingsley said.

Minerva shook her head. "I can't do this to him. I know it's in his best interests, but I simply cannot do it."

Now he was to be transferred to Azkaban until another candidate could be decided.

Minerva turned at the sound of the door. Kingsley returned, but instead of the Azkaban guard escorts, he was followed by Severus Snape.

"Severus, what on earth are you doing here?"

He and Kingsley came to stop beside her. Severus looked through the cell bars at James. Even then she didn't realise why he was there until Kingsley said, "He's offering to take the Bond."

Minerva spluttered, utterly undignified but too dumbfounded to keep her composure. "You must be joking!"

"Unfortunately not," Severus said, still looking—no, glaring—at James.

"Severus, you hate him!"

"Yes, I do."

Anger restored Minerva's composure. "Is that what this is? You want to take the Bond so you can abuse him?"

Severus snapped his gaze over to her. "You think I would do that?"

He sounded offended, but still—"I can't imagine why else you would want it."

"I'd like to hear your reasons myself," Kingsley said.

Severus sighed and folded his arms over his chest, leaning against the bars of the cell and looking into it. "Harry asked me to."

"That doesn't fill me with confidence, Snape. Don't look at me like that," Kingsley added at Severus' sharp look. "Your son is hardly a paragon of virtue, killer of Voldemort or not."

"I thought Harry knew about your rivalry with James," Minerva said. "Why would he suggest it?"

Severus looked away again. "He had a near death experience on Thursday. He claims to have seen his mother."

Minerva uttered a small gasp. Severus didn't look around.

"He says she asked him to do whatever he could to help Potter. Harry has decided this means I should take the Bond."

There was a pause then. Minerva watched Severus, but her thoughts were with Harry. Had he really seen Lily? Minerva liked the idea of an afterlife, but she had doubts as to the ability of those who'd moved on to communicate with those left behind. Ghosts were one thing, but for those who'd really moved on… There were necromancers, of course, though it was illegal in much of the west, including Britain, and personally she had doubts as to whether what they summoned was truly the spirit of those passed on.

Kingsley broke the silence, asking the question Minerva wondered herself.

"What happened to Harry? How did he come near death?"

Severus hesitated, then: "Suicide."

Minerva reached out to touch his arm, wanting to comfort him. "Is he still so traumatised by what he went through?"

He touched his fingers lightly to hers, but then shrugged her off. "Actually, it was remorse."

"For the people he killed?" Kingsley said.

"For Dumbledore," Severus amended, finally looking around. "He has always regretted the other deaths he caused, Shacklebolt. He only did those at the Dark Lord's command, you know that even if the _Prophet_ won't admit it. Dumbledore was the only one he killed by choice, and he's come to regret it."

If he hadn't just said Harry tried to kill himself, Minerva wouldn't have believed it. She still remembered the day Dumbledore died and Harry's firm proclamation that he didn't regret it.

Kingsley looked between James and Severus, and then said, "I can't let you have him. I don't know you that well, Snape, but what I do know doesn't make me want to let you become a Slave owner."

Severus looked neither surprised or offended by this, until Kingsley went on.

"That said, I don't have a whole lot of options. I'm willing to let it happen, under certain conditions."

"What conditions?" Severus asked warily.

"One, you have an interview with a psychiatrist to decide if they think you'd abuse the Bond. Two, even if the psychiatrist clears you, you submit to regular checks to make sure you're not mistreating Potter."

Severus nodded, although he looked disappointed that Kingsley was even giving the option.

"One more thing," Kingsley said. "I'll only do it if Harry turns himself in for arrest."

Severus went stiff all over.

"Kingsley, really?" Minerva gasped.

Kingsley's expression was set, and he directed his answer at Severus. "He made this demand of you because of some vision of his mother, which he had because he tried to kill himself out of remorse for killing Dumbledore. Attempted suicide is a big gesture, but if he really regrets what he did then he'll submit to the punishment for it."

Severus' face twisted furiously. "Punishment? He was tortured and—"

"Don't," Kingsley interrupted, unthreatened by Severus' anger. "I heard all that from you and the Assistant last summer, but I'll say now what I did then: as terribly as your son suffered, it wasn't a punishment for the murders he committed. We all know that. I think he knows it, too. If I'm to believe that he made a request of you in good faith, then I need proof that his remorse didn't last only as long as his near death experience."

Severus shook with anger, hands fisted at his sides, teeth grinding so hard Minerva could hear it. She said nothing, watching him, waiting to see what he would say. She could see where Kingsley was coming from, and she had deep reservations about Severus taking James' Bond. As well as their childhood animosity, there was the fact Severus had slept with James' wife and produced a child from it. It couldn't be a good idea for them to be magically Bound together.

Gradually, Severus relaxed. Not entirely, but enough to stop his teeth grinding and his fists loosening to let blood flow again to his white fingers.

"Fine," he ground out.

"But you're not to tell him that," Kingsley said.

Minerva frowned. "What do you mean?"

"If I'm to know it's genuine remorse, Harry has to come in entirely of his own free will, not because he thinks it's an exchange or deal of any sort. Suggest the thought of Azkaban to him, but don't tell him that I'm only agreeing to let you have Potter's Bond if he turns himself in. That's my offer."

"And if Harry never turns himself in?" Severus asked.

Kingsley's gaze was unwavering. "Then I find someone else for Potter."

* * *

Draco found Granger and Longbottom in the library, no surprise. Most seventh years spent their time in the library these days, and even those who didn't still spent it studying.

With the exception of the first years, they were the smallest year group at Hogwarts, a surprising number of them lost to the war, and not all of them Muggleborns. A few of the purebloods and half-bloods had been killed during Voldemort's brief reign, but a few others were simply missing. Those left had developed a kind of survivors' guilt that drove them all to make as much of their education and their lives as they could.

Draco and Blaise were the only boys left in the Slytherin seventh year dorm. Theo Nott was among the missing; he'd never turned up to school in September, but he wasn't confirmed dead. The best idea anyone had as to his location was Lisa Turpin's claim that Theo once expressed a desire to run off to Switzerland.

Vincent Crabbe had dropped out of Hogwarts before the end of September. He'd never really been one for academic pursuit; his father died on Execution Day and his mother was less pressuring about finishing his schooling. Vincent had turned up from habit on 1st September then decided that he really couldn't be bothered and simply walked out. Last Draco heard, he was working as a bouncer for a club in Knockturn Alley.

Gregory Goyle had simply never turned up. His father had died on Execution Day, too, leaving Greg to look after his Dementor-kissed mother. Draco wasn't sure how he was earning money to pay for her care; the few times they'd spoken over the last year, Greg had been decidedly cagey about answering. Draco decided it was best not to know.

The Slytherin girls were little better off. Tracey Davis had died trying to protect her Muggle mother from Death Eaters, and the Greengrasses had fled the country early in Voldemort's reign and never come back, leaving only Pansy Parkinson and Millicent Bulstrode behind.

The Gryffindors of their year were a lot better off; only Seamus Finnigan was gone, dead. But they'd lost a lot more students in other year groups, and they'd gained the fewest number of new students, with only three First Years.

Draco stalked up to the table Granger and Longbottom were sharing, neither of them noticing until he dropped down into a chair opposite them. They both jumped and Draco smirked. Granger scowled at him.

"What do you want, Malfoy? We're trying to study."

"Take a break, I want to show you something."

Longbottom glanced at Granger, who stared suspiciously at Draco. "Show us what?"

"Come with me and find out."

"Why should we trust you?" Longbottom asked.

"Why shouldn't you?"

"Because you're a racist bully?"

Draco bristled. " _Was_ a racist bully," he corrected. "When was the last time you heard me use the M-word? Or see me pick on anyone?"

"That may be," Granger conceded, "but we're still not friends. The only thing we have in common is Harry."

Draco raised an eyebrow. Longbottom gasped and Granger looked around conspiratorially then leant forwards over the table to ask in a whisper, "Is this about him?"

"Granger, you realise you're drawing more attention to yourself right now than you would by just acting normal?" He stood up. "Just come with me, will you?"

He didn't wait for an answer, just stalked away, but he smiled when he heard them hurriedly packing their things up. He slowed his pace enough that they could easily catch up, then picked it up outside the library.

He shushed them when they asked where they were going, and led them up to the seventh floor. Opposite the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy teaching trolls ballet, there was a door set into the wall, and he stopped just in front of it, hand on the doorhandle.

"What are we doing at the Room of Requirement?" Granger asked.

Draco looked up and down the corridor, making sure it was empty. "Don't shout, don't get angry, and most importantly, _don't touch him_."

Hermione gasped, but Draco didn't give them time to do more than that. He twisted the handle and quickly ushered Granger and Longbottom into the room beyond. It was fashioned into a sitting room, several low, squishy armchairs set around a circular coffee table, a window letting a cool breeze through.

Harry sat in one of the armchairs, legs crossed and feet tucked under him, Kiwi on his lap. He turned his face towards them when they came in, but didn't get up, just tightened his grip on Kiwi. Draco moved over to him and Harry immediately held out a hand for him to hold.

"Granger—Hermione and Neville are here," Draco told him. "Where's Cid?"

"He left," Harry said quietly, but he didn't sound distressed so Draco didn't have to find Villiers and curse his bollocks off. More loudly, Harry greeted, "Hey."

"Oh, Harry…" Granger's gaze never left him even as she moved forwards into the circle of chairs. She looked as if she wanted to throw herself at him for a hug, but Draco glared and she dropped into the chair opposite. Longbottom was more wary, moving forwards but stopping outside the circle of chairs.

"Harry, are you… I mean, how are you doing?" Granger asked tentatively.

Harry gave a weak smile. It made his scar twist, not making him look any more attractive, but at least he was smiling these days. It was never very big, but it was something.

"I'm… getting better," he answered. "Not great, but I'm getting there. How are you?"

"I'm fine. Studying for NEWTs, you know. It's—but Harry, what are you doing here? Does Professor McGonagall know? Is your father here? Is everything alright? Has something happened?"

"Have you come to kill us?"

"Neville!"

Longbottom shot Granger an apologetic look, but drew his wand when Draco drew his. Neither of them raised them, but they were both prepared to use them.

"I'm not here to kill anyone," Harry said, giving no indication he was offended or upset by the question. "I don't want to ever kill anyone ever again."

"Of course you don't," Granger said. "We know you'd never have done it before if it weren't for Voldemort making you."

"So you don't think he should go to Azkaban anymore?" Draco asked, and then at Granger's startled look added, "Severus told us about your visit to Saint Mungo's last summer."

Harry tugged on his hand. "Draco, stop it. I don't blame you guys for being angry at me. I know the things I did for Voldemort were wrong, and I am sorry about it, even though I only did it to save your lives. I wish I hadn't had to."

Granger leant forwards, sitting on the edge of her seat and apparently restraining herself from leaving it only because Harry sank back within his own chair at her movement. "Harry, it's alright, we don't blame you. We're not angry at you and we don't think you should go to Azkaban. What happened at the hospital last summer—I just hadn't realised what you're been through and…" She bit her lip, but pushed on. "Don't take this badly, but your father was… well, an arse."

She clearly worried Harry would take offence at that, but he smiled. "He taught you for five years and you're surprised when he acts like an arse?"

"He was more of an arse," she said dryly, and Harry shrugged.

"I can't apologise for him, and he probably won't ever do it himself."

"I doubt I'll ever meet him again," Hermione admitted.

"Yeah, I guess." He took a shaky breath. "Anyway, I just wanted to come visit you both. I… I wanted to know if we're still… well, friends. It's okay if you don't want to be," he added quickly. "I won't blame you if you don't like me anymore because of the things I've done, and I can't be a very good friend even if you don't hate me because I'm still… I'm not good. I can't deal with people very well yet still. But I just… I wanted to know."

Granger stood up, ignoring Draco's glare as she moved around the table. Harry's hand tightened around Draco's and his other clenched around Kiwi. Granger sat on the table, facing Harry, and reached out a hand.

"Granger—!"

"Shut up, Malfoy," she interrupted. "Harry, do you mind if I touch your knee?"

Harry twitched like he wanted to back further into the chair, and Granger looked disappointed, but then Harry let go of Kiwi to hold out his other hand. "Not my knee."

Granger smiled and took it, wrapping both her hands around Harry's one. "I still want to be friends with you. I don't know what your father said about last summer, but I did say some stupid things and I'm sorry for that. I don't think you should be in Azkaban and I—"

"I do."

Draco lifted his gaze to Longbottom. Granger twisted around to look at him too, gaping. Harry's head turned towards him and he tugged both his hands free from Granger and Draco's grip. Longbottom avoided Draco and Granger's gazes, eyes fixed on Harry.

"I'm sorry, I know you were tortured and everything, but that wasn't a punishment for killing Dumbledore. That was just Voldemort."

"Neville—"

"No," Harry interrupted Granger. "It's okay. He can think that. It's true, anyway. What Voldemort did…" He shivered, hugging Kiwi again, "That was punishment for betraying him, not for killing Dumbledore. It's true that I haven't been punished for that."

"Bullshit," Draco snapped, fingering his wand and glaring at Longbottom even as he spoke to Harry. "Just because the Dark Lord didn't do it because of Dumbledore doesn't mean it doesn't count. You've suffered more than enough to make up for everything you did, and anyone who thinks otherwise is just too stupid to realise what you've been through."

Granger leapt up from the table, never noticing that Harry flinched at the movement. "Neville's not stupid."

"He's as thick as this castle, and just as empty headed."

"Shut up, Malfoy!" Longbottom snapped, surprising Draco. He didn't think the other boy had the backbone for it. "You're just too in love with Harry to see his flaws. He's a murderer, and murderers are meant to be punished. You wouldn't be so kind about him if he'd killed your father!"

Draco stared at him, baffled. "What does my father have to do with anything? It's not like he killed _your_ father. I don't see why—"

"He didn't kill their torturers, either!"

That didn't make Draco any less confused, but Harry's head snapped up, suddenly ashen, his arms tightening around Kiwi so much she bent in half, his voice coming out in a strained gasp.

"What?"

"You heard me," Neville said, blinking several times as he eyes grew wet. "I don't believe what they say about only true Death Eaters dying when Voldemort did. I think you killed them in one of your magical outbursts, but Lucius Malfoy didn't die, or your dad or that Assistant guy, and neither did Bellatrix, Rodolphus, and Rabastan Lestrange, the people that tortured my parents nearly to death."

Harry was trembling now. Draco turned away from Neville, crouching by the chair; he knew he wouldn't be able to touch Harry without getting hurt right now, but he tried to keep his voice soothing. "Harry, it's okay, ignore him. He doesn't know what he's talking about."

"Oh yes, I do! Their names weren't in the lists of the dead. They're still alive!"

"No," Harry whined, shaking his head. "Dad said Bellatrix was dead, he said so. What about the others? Please, please, don't let them hurt me again."

"Harry, they're dead, you're safe, I promise. No one will ever hurt you again. Rodolphus and Rabastan are dead, too."

"They aren't!"

Draco whirled. "They _are_ , my parents killed them!"

Silence.

Longbottom and Granger gaped at him. Draco looked away, focusing on Harry again.

"Harry, they're dead. They can't hurt you."

"Your parents killed them?" Harry's voice was quiet, but less afraid now, seeking reassurance. Draco didn't want to say any of this in front of Granger and Longbottom, but he had to for Harry's sake.

"They killed all of them when they tried to come and rescue me, the day we escaped the Manor. I promise you, Harry, they're all dead and they can't hurt you again."

Draco turned a glare on Granger, who had her hands to her mouth, looking horrified, then to Longbottom, who was as pale as Harry. "So there. You know the truth—the Lestranges are all dead, and you have my parents and to thank for it. Do you still condemn Harry to Azkaban?"

Longbottom was as pale as Harry. He swallowed thickly and nodded jerkily. "Yes. I'm glad the Lestranges are dead, but Harry's still a murderer."

Draco shook his head, letting his face express every bit of disgust he felt for Longbottom, then turned back to Harry, taking care to soften his voice. "Come on, Harry, it's time to go."

Harry said nothing, but he grabbed Draco's arm and stood, holding tight as the furniture of the room vanished. Granger reached towards Harry as they moved towards the door, but Harry shied away from her.

"Harry, please, Neville doesn't mean—"

"Yes, I do."

"It's okay," Harry said quietly, unseeing eyes still staring forwards. "I appreciate your support, Hermione, but Neville's allowed to think what he likes. I'm sorry, Neville. I wish things were different. Goodbye, both of you."

He started walking and Draco went with him, not sparing the two Gryffindors another glance.

Out in the hall, they turned and headed for the nearest staircase. Draco murmured a reminder to make them invisible and Harry assured him they were. The only other person that knew they were in the castle was Tyler, who was currently in McGonagall's office discussing his enrolment for next year. The possession had undone whatever it was that turned him squib, which he'd decided was fair payment. He'd forgiven Harry, too; they'd never be great friends again, but Tyler no longer held a grudge against Harry.

He also still had all Riddle's memories, including his knowledge of magic, which he was using to argue that he could go straight into seventh year come September, skipping the sixth year studies. He claimed it was a desire to stick with his old year mates, but Draco suspected he just didn't want to spend two years in school. Tyler had been the one to say he wanted to finish his education, but he also seemed reluctant to leave the manor, and glad he wouldn't start schooling until September.

Draco had extended an invitation to Tyler to remain at the manor as long as he liked, when Tyler said he had nowhere else to go because he point blank refused to move back in with the Swifts. Part of Draco didn't want to, because Tyler had tried to kill Harry, but Harry was convinced Tyler's hatred was gone. Without that, Draco had no objection. He liked Tyler well enough, and in truth he had selfish reasons for wanting Tyler around—he hoped there might be a chance of something between them.

He felt horrendously guilty thinking it, but he couldn't help it. He loved Harry, he really did, but he knew that anything between him and Harry was a very long way off. He didn't resent Harry for it, he knew that Harry had suffered things Draco could scarcely imagine and it took time to recover from that—if he ever really would—but the fact remained that he was a healthy eighteen year old boy. He wanted sex and he wasn't sure how long he could go without. He wouldn't do anything without Harry's permission, because he refused to cheat on him, but he hoped Harry would be as understanding as he had been before. He doubted Harry would want to watch again, but he might still agree for Draco to use Tyler for physical relief.

"You should make those two idiots forget what I said about the Lestranges," Draco said as they made their way down through the castle. "Longbottom will probably report it otherwise and the Aurors might try to arrest Mother."

Harry nodded, but said nothing. Draco wanted to rage about Longbottom, but he had a feeling Harry wouldn't really appreciate it, so they walked in silence to the ground floor, out the front doors, and down the front lawn to the school gates. They were shut, but there was no Auror presence like there had been last year, and it was almost curfew for even the seventh years so there was no one to see the gates swing open so the two could leave.

They stopped just outside, beyond the Anti-Apparition perimeter, and Draco turned to Harry.

"I should come with you."

He hadn't wanted to return this evening, unwilling to leave Harry alone after his near death four days earlier, but Harry assured him he would be fine, and in some ways he did seem better since it happened. Draco was sure part of that was Riddle's absence; no matter what Riddle or Harry had ever said about it, Harry could only be better without him.

Harry didn't turn to him, but he smiled faintly. "No, it's okay. You should do some studying at school. The teachers can better guide you in revision than me or Dad, especially now."

"Now?"

"I don't think Dad will focus well on tutoring when he's dealing with James."

Draco shook his head. "He might not have to deal with James. You heard him; he said Minister Shacklebolt refused him until he gets seen by a psychiatrist."

"It'll be fine," Harry said assuredly.

"You shouldn't interfere with it," Draco warned. "You need to let the shrink make their own decision. If you force things, it'll probably be worse for James than leaving him with my father."

He didn't like his father enslaving a man, not even after seeing the way Snape and the Assistant interacted over the last nine months. He knew the relationship with his father and James Potter was a lot different to Snape and the Assistant's, but he'd also learnt enough about Snape to know that he wouldn't be a much better Master for James. He didn't think Harry should have even suggested it, let alone blackmailed Snape into doing it.

"I won't interfere," Harry said reluctantly. "But I'm sure Dad'll get it. There's no one else who can."

Draco doubted that, but he didn't bother saying so.

"I'm still not sure you should go home alone," he said, changing the subject to better things. "You haven't been alone before and this was your first time out the house. Let me come with you and I'll Apparate back here myself. I don't even Splinch myself anymore."

Harry squeezed his hand and finally turned to face him. "Draco, I'm okay. Really, I am. I can manage to get home."

"I know you can, I just…"

Harry cocked his head slightly, then said, "There, I Wished away the Anti-Apparition spells on your house so I can teleport straight into the house. Does that make you feel better?"

"Not really," Draco admitted.

"Draco." Harry moved closer, surprising Draco when he lowered the hand clutching Kiwi to his chest so he could stand close enough to press his forehead gently to Draco's chin. His hair tickled Draco's nose and he resisted the urge to nuzzle against it, afraid of scaring Harry off from this unusually intimate gesture.

Draco's voice was barely a breath of whisper when he spoke. "I love you."

"I love you too. And I'm okay."

"I thought you wouldn't be, after Longbottom upset you like that."

Harry squeezed his hand. "They're dead, and I'm safe, and I'm alive." His breath hitched with a swallowed sob, but when Draco started to pull away, Harry's other arm come up and pressed to Draco's, Kiwi still occupying his hand but the message clear enough that he wanted Draco to stay. He shifted his head to Draco's shoulder, shaking slightly as they stood front to front, just enough room between their bodies for a sheet of parchment. Draco hardly dared breathe, clinging to Harry's hand.

"I'm alive, Draco. I'm alive when I never thought I would be. I've got a future and I've got to do something with it, and I need to step into it by myself. I know Dad's waiting for me and I know you're here whenever I need you, and I'm grateful for you both, I really am, but I need to take this step by myself. I don't even have Riddle anymore, and I need to know that I can do this by myself, without anyone else holding my hand. I need to be able to do this if I'm going to do anything else with my life."

Draco brought his free hand up, laying it gently against Harry's hip. Harry twitched slightly, but he didn't burn Draco and he didn't pull away.

"Alright," he said softly. "Going home isn't that big of a deal, but I guess that's why it's so important. Baby steps. I'll see you next weekend then. Just let me know that you get back safe. Send me a note."

In reply, Harry just brushed his nose against Draco's neck. "I love you."

Draco drew back slightly. "Harry, are you sure you're alright?"

Harry's head tilted up, eyes unfocused but attention irrefutably fixed on Draco's face. "I'm fine. As fine as I can be, anyway. I'm realising something, that's all. The future's mine, Draco. You've always known that, but it's new for me."

"Then why are you saying _I love you_ like it's a goodbye?"

"It's not a goodbye. It's a reminder, for you and for me. The future is mine and it's empty and terrifying, but I love you and that'll hold me up through whatever's ahead of me. Tell me you love me."

"You know I do."

"Say it. My mother's love protected my against Voldemort. I need yours now to protect me against whatever else life will throw at me."

Draco couldn't help himself: he ducked his head and kissed Harry. Harry stiffened and Draco started to pull back, but then Harry relaxed and leant into it. It remained chaste and lasted only a few seconds, but it said more than any words could.

Even so, Harry had asked him for something, and Draco would give it, just as he'd give Harry anything for as long as they both lived, and with any luck that would be a hundred years and more. Draco fully intended to spend every single year at Harry's side, willing to give him absolutely anything he asked for, whether it was the world or just three simple words.

"I love you."

* * *

That's all, folks. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it!

Will there be a sequel? Short answer: maybe. Long answer: see the FPS tumblr. Hopefully this ending wraps things up enough that it satisfies even if a sequel never comes.


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